Lo-Quality WoW

After spending most of the other night repeatedly getting my add kicked by Sindragosa, I was not looking forward to another night of repeated wipes.  And I was half right, we did wipe repeatedly.  I just had the wrong boss.

Fortunately, our regular raid leader was back, which meant we had our main tank back.  Which worked out since the Death Knight who had been our acting tank wasn’t on.  Also, the Rogue who had been with us the other night wasn’t along, so his spot was taken by my guildmate, the Druid.  So now that we had a proper Paladin and Druid along, I could stop pretending to be them.  Also, our other Hunter was along this time, meaning I didn’t have to do all the Hunter-specific jobs by myself anymore.

Our first try of Sindragosa was very similar to the other night.  On the very first Frost Beacon during phase 2, the target ran the wrong way, realized he was going the wrong way, then reversed BACK THROUGH THE RAID!  We scrambled out of the way but he still managed to freeze himself and another person who wasn’t fast enough.  Which was stupid.  You can screw up the first Beacon, it’s better to just stop and stay on the wrong side rather than to run through everyone else trying to get into the correct position.

And because of the chaos that caused, we just couldn’t recover.  On the second try, positioning was better but again we ended up wiping because of dumb mistakes.  In this case, I died, but not through my own fault.  I had gotten Ice Tombed and had positioned myself correctly near enough to Sindragosa that the tank on that side could easily slip behind the tomb to remove the debuff before taunting back. 

While I was a popscicle, Sindragosa did her Icy Grip thingy.  Well, that shouldn’t be a problem for me right?  Well either some people had decided to dps my Tomb while running out or were hiding behind the the Tomb and dpsing.  And you guessed it, they broke me out just as Sindragosa cast her Blistering Cold, killing myself and at least one other person who was probably trying to hide behind the Tomb! 

I think it was the third try where we actually succeeded.  (My mind was trying to blank out each try as much as possible, so I lost count.)  However I still ended up dying.  Why?  Because again, I just happened to be Ice Tombed when she went down.  And while everyone was celebrating, they sort of forgot to break me out and I died.  Sigh. 

Then it was on to the Lich King.  And this is where I detour into a talk about our Warrior tank.  He’s been the one hoping to take out the Lich King.  He’s been the one bugging everyone on getting to take out LK.  Apparently, he also thought a gung-ho attitude would make up for NOT READING ABOUT THE ENCOUNTER!

The Lich King fight is even more annoying than Sindragosa, and that’s not even counting the 1 minute of dialogue you sit through on each try.  It’s a fight where it’s very easily for one person to screw up and just wipe the whole raid.  Everyone needs to be practically perfect to get it done.  And part of that is knowing the fight.  And I had looked up our Warrior and was pretty sure he’d never faced Lich King before.  Heck, before this run, he hadn’t faced a couple of the Icecrown Citadel bosses.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that our Warrior tank wasn’t using vent at all?  I’ve mentioned it before but having vent improves needed communication during end-game raid encounters.  You can macro somethings but some instructions take too damn long to type out in the middle of a fight.  That’s assuming the person who the command is directed to is even paying attention.  So not only did our in fight communication suffer, but while everyone else new to the fight were getting their brief of the fight over vent, someone had to take him aside and whisper the damn fight to him. 

Yes, he wasn’t the only new person to the fight and until you actually see some of the phases, it sometimes just doesn’t make sense.  Which is where the consistency comes in.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done the Lich King fight now.  And almost every night, we had at least one person who was new to the fight that night.  As I said, it takes just one person to wipe the raid on that fight and guess who usually did it? 

And ironically, the one night where they had a fully experienced group to fight the Lich King, since there were three Hunter’s on, I had opted to sit out and they took the Lich King down!  Since then, when we’ve been even lucky enough to get to the Lich King, it’s been a long night each time because there’s always the one new person seeing and doing the fight for the first time.  I was being blocked by a damn learning curve!

So what about our Warrior tank and him not doing his research?  We’ll get to that in a bit.  We did our setup, this time with the Warrior doing the Lich King tanking while our Paladin took on the Shambling Horrors and assorted mobs.  One of the Holy Priests took the job of cleansing the Necrotic Plague.  We started and myself and our other Hunter stood next to the Warrior.

And that’s when our shadow Priest, still acting as raid leader for the week, scolded us, telling us we were in the wrong position.  I think the burdens of leadership had gotten to him.  Why?  Well, during the long dialogue, we wait and both of us Hunter’s lay down Snake Traps before the fight starts.    It’s silly dps but every little bit counts.  And we’d been doing it on the Lich King fight for weeks.  Our shadow Priest only noticed us doing that now?!?

Phase 1 went smoothly.   Now during the transition phase, usually we work it out between us two Hunters that one focuses on the Ice Spheres and one does dps on the Raging Spirits.  I was on Ice Sphere when I hear our raid leader complaining that dps on the Spirits is low.  I know that my main focus is the Ice Sphere but I still dps the Raging Spirits when I have a free moment or two. 

That’s when I glance over and see our Warlock also dpsing the Ice Spheres instead of the Raging Spirits.  So that meant two dps were not hiting the Raging Spirits at full power instead of just one.  The thing is, like the Kinetic Bombs the other night, Warlock are just not well suited to taking out the Ice Spheres.  They usually have very little instant cast spells and many of their spells are DOTs, which can be dicey if the Ice Spheres get too close to someone. 

We make it into phase 2, and we’re good until the very first Val’kyr.  On this run we had very little in the way of stuns, mainly slows.  Which meant everyone HAD to switch dps to the Val’kyr immediately and they didn’t and we lost a person.  Okay, could be worse…and it was. 

The Defile got placed in the center of the platform.  Unfortunate, but not an immediate wipe.  That is, until someone RAN THROUGH IT!  Most of us were on one side of the Defile, dpsing the Val’kyr while the Lich King was being tanked on the far side, and instead of going around to continue dps, they ran straight through it.  And in no time flat, the Defile covered the whole area and we wiped. 

I’m not sure who had run through the Defile but I’m betting it was either the Warrior or Warlock, the two who didn’t know the fight.  However, I was too busy DYING to check.  So while we were setting up for the next try, I calmly ask the Warlock if he wanted to handle to Ice Spheres, to which the raid leader says “no, it should be the Hunters”, pointing out the same points I did earlier.  I told him it was because I saw the Warlock dpsing and I wanted to clear that up. 

Which then lead to the discussion, “hmm, I think we only need one Hunter to dps the Ice Spheres.”  And both of us Hunter’s replied that that was exactly what we were doing.  Something we worked out the first time we ever faced the Lich King months ago.  Again, all this time and our shadow Priest never even realized that’s what we’d been doing. 

The second try was almost as painful, except it started early in phase 1.  The Warlock was slow to get behind the Shambling Horror when he got the Necrotic Plague, and passed it on to our Druid.  So our Druid also ran behind the Shambling Horror.  And they both stood there!  (Although talking to my guildmate later, I suspect he might have dozed off for a bit at that point.)  So for several seconds we kept getting message “Necrotic Plague jumped to X” between the two of them while our holy Priest was apparently cleansing them like a madman.  I finally told them to get the hell out of there, and then the ping pong match between them finally ended. 

Transition phase was still rough, mainly because I suspect there was some split dps going on with the Raging Spirits again.  We go into Phase 2, which is fine until the Warrior tanks the Lich King WHILE STANDING IN THE DEFILE!  So again, there’s a big black spot over the area.  What does our Warrior say?  “Oh, you mean those spots grow?”  Beyond the fact that he was purposely standing in it, every single strategy I’ve read about fight specifically warns about the Defiles and that you can’t stand in it more than a second or two without wiping the raid.  Which is how I know the Warrior hadn’t studied the fight.

The rest of the night was very similar with the wipes.  Mostly people, usually myself and the shadow Priest, being thrown off the edge by the Val’kyr because people weren’t focus firing on it.  There was a brief thing from our raid leader about not using Frost Traps because their frost effect covers the Defile, making it harder to see.  Again, something both of us Hunter’s figured out a while back and stopped doing.  (Though to be fair, I know one of the times we had one of the other Hunters on, he did drop Frost Traps but neither of us last night had dropped one.)  And numerous mess up with the Defile’s being put in bad spots. 

We ended up calling it a little early and I was glad to.  I was just too pissed off about being stopped by a learning curve once again.  The Lich King, Sindragosa, and Blood Queen, always getting stopped on them while we have to wait while some new person learns the fight.  I know, everyone needs to learn the fights, but how the heck is it that we almost always have at least one new person everytime we do one of those fights?  Can’t we get a consistent group of 10 people to show up regularly?  Isn’t that the purpose of putting together a raid group? 

Sigh, tonight is their 25-man night.  I’ll be on, which may or may not end up with an invite to it.  If not, well, I’m almost done with my first playthrough of Alan Wake on my xbox 360.  I really wouldn’t mind a night off from WoW.  I think I could use one…