Lo-Quality WoW

Well, we’ve now officially done our first foray against the Ruby Sanctum.  And it wasn’t pretty.  Not by a long shot.  But at least this time I remembered to equip the correct ammo.

Of course our first hurdle was getting 25 people, which took quite a bit.  Then we had to figure out which door underneath Wyrmrest temple it was.  We didn’t start until close to 45 minutes after the usual start time.

Fortunately, several people had already done the instance either on alts or in 10-man.  So we knew how to handle the trash mobs.  Which was fortunate, because even knowing the proper order to take things out, we still lost people during those fights.  Never a good sign.

The first mini-boss we faced was Baltharus the Warborn.  The fight itself, at least for me, was pretty simple since I was at range.  Extreme range in fact.  So I wasn’t affected by his little whirlwind type attack.  As for his little Ennervating Brand debuff, I only noticed it because something kept placing the events from it in the middle of my screen, which was full of them for awhile. 

We lost people, mainly from I believe standing too close for the whirlwind attack.  Otherwise, we had the original clearly marked and re-marked when he cloned himself and he went down rather easily. 

 The next one we took on was Saviana Ragefire.  This was more interesting mainly because I was a little more involved.  For whatever reason, I was always one of her Conflagrate targets.  However, since I was at my extreme range, usually it wasn’t that hard to make sure I wasn’t by anyone else, although I did have a brief panic moment when I realized I was also out of healing range.  That and the one time two people during the “scatter” seemed bent on following me…

Of course the other reason is because she has a little enrage that us Hunter’s remove with our Tranquilizing Shot.  We had three Hunters so it wasn’t too bad.  Or wasn’t until the middle of the fight when I hear “dammit, we lost all the Hunters!” which was news to me.  “Okay, you guys need to tell me when I’m dead next time.”  So for the rest of the fight, being the only Hunter up, it was up to me for the Tranq Shots.  Fortunately someone started calling out the timers for those so I was well prepared when the enrage popped and could get my shot off without being in the middle of another shot.

Third up was General Zarithrian.  At first, we had our third tank handle the adds from one side, while the main tank and the other off-tank was on the other side and those adds.  That made it easier for those two tanks to switch off when the Sunder Armor stacks got too high.  However, because we really didn’t split our dps assignments, one side’s adds were going down but not the other.  The low dps side eventually got too many adds and we got overwhelmed. 

The next try, we altered our tactics slightly.  Imagine a triangle.  The “north” point was where Zarithrian was being tanked, with the two other points where the adds were coming in, each with an off-tank.  The dps was centered on the middle of the “south” edge of the triangle.  We also assigned groups to each add, with slightly more dps on the ones on the side of the tank who would be alternating with our main tank.  (In this case, the “east” off-tank.) 

I was in the dps group attacking “east”.  And while we had enough dps to take out the adds on that side, the “west” side still didn’t and we had to turn and assist.  So my fight became a very odd repeat of taking out our assigne adds.  As I turned towards “north”, I would drop whatever DOTs I had on Zairthrian, primarily Serpent Sting and Black Arrow, with an occassional Explosive Shot thrown in for good measure.  I’d finish my turn towards to the “west” and add just enough dps that those adds would go down, just as the new ones would appear.  Then I’d drop DOTs again (if possible) as I turned back “east”.

I sort of felt like a very weird sprinkler system.  Somehow, Zarithrian did eventually go down, although the fight took a damn long time.  His aoe fear was more a rhythm breaker than anything else.  We were just beating the adds in time, and I’m guessing if some people hadn’t just ignored adds completely, we’d still be doing the fight.

Last up was Halion.  We discussed the fight, however we only went over phase 1 and phase 2, figuring that’s probably as far as we would get.  Actually, the raid leader was only going to explain phase 1 when we pointed out that getting Halion down to the 75% hp point should rather easy.  It was the mechanics of phase 2 we were really worried about.

So to start, we pretty much encircled Halion.  A holy Paladin was assigned to cleanse that Mark of Combustion debuff thingy, which was explained but I don’t think many people understood.  We also decided who would stay outside on phase 2.  Then we were told to take a few steps into the circle so that when the firewall went up, we’d wouldn’t get trapped outside.

Which would have been fine except a couple guys were mounted and a “few steps” for a mount is a lot bigger than for a character.  So naturally, we ended up pulling and having a few people stuck outside the firewall, including the cleansing Paladin!  Not exactly the best start.

Personally, I was in an interesting position.  I was at extreme range, directly behind Halion.  That left me out of range of his tail swipe, allowed me to dps and also not affect anyone else if I got hit with the Mark of Combustion.  It also gave me a good view of the field, including Meteor strikes and the resulting flames. 

Which meant I was also afforded a great view of the Combustion areas people left right under Halion.  People were just not getting out of the raid when they got the Marks.  And a few didn’t notice the indicator for the Meteor Strike and got flattened.  So by the time we pushed to phase 2, we already were down several people.

Phase 2 was a relatively quick phase that first time.  Mainly because the tank hadn’t realized how “thick” the energy beam between the shadow orbs was and died almost immediately.  And of course that meant Halion then rampage through the raid.

The next few tries were a little better, at least we didn’t pull early by accident!  We were only losing one or two people in phase 1, which still wasn’t good.  It was phase 2 where we were getting wiped.  In this case, it was the Dusk Shroud persistent damage thing that hit everyone.  Except for the one time I got hit by a lag spike and died from the energy beam, I always died to the Dark Shroud.  And that was after popping a health potion, a healthstone and even a bandage on myself. 

I think we hit phase 3 only once, ironically the one time I had gotten cut in half by the beam because of lag, so I never got to see it myself.  Even then, we hadn’t separated the dps.  Not that it would have helped.  Considering I wasn’t the only one dead, the dps split would have been more than a little chaotic and uneven. 

We eventually called it a night.  I think that after we’ve done a few tries in 10-man and got people used to the mechanics of the fight better, we might be able to do it.  I guess it’ll depend a lot on the raid makeup as well.  I really think the phase 2 was a problem because of healing.  I have one of the highest hp totals short of the plate wearers and the Dusk Shroud was consistently downing me.  We’ll have to figure something out with that.  I’m not sure if we’re doing the 25-man again tonight or going it on our 10-man’s as normal.  I’d really like to down Halion.  He has some nice loot!