Lo-Quality WoW

Okay, since I already have a habit of being wordy, and because of the long weekend, I’ll just go over the highlights of our ICC run over the past couple of days.  Actually, there was a debate initially if we were just going to extend the instance from last week when we were at the Lich King or just go ahead and start anew.  It turned out that most of us didn’t care, so we went in from the beginning. 

The whole lower spire we’ve shown that we can do on Heroic.  We’ve gotten Marrowgar down, although I spent most of the fight impaled.  When one gets stuck on a Bone Spike three times in a row, I think that’s rather unfair.  Deathwhisper and Gunship were cake.  Deathbringer Saurfang was a little more interesting since we didn’t have the exact group setup we wanted.

We adjust our play a little.  The Hunter’s, instead of being on the extreme end on each side, lined up on the corner of the dias, to more centralize our efforts.  I still managed to almost give our Paladin healer a heart-attack. 

I was under the effects of the Mark of the Fallen Champion, and was pulling a Blood Beast, when I did a Disengage and jumped out of his healing range.  He scolded me for it, but I pointed out it was either the Disengage or taking the hit and that would have killed me straight.  At least with the Disengage, I avoided the hit and gave a second or two for either another healer to get me or for me to pop a potion.  When asked why I didn’t Feign Death instead, I pointed out that there’s a slight delay before it takes effect and he was close enough to hit me, plus there’s always a chance of the Feign Death being resisted.  The Disengage was more sure.

Beyond that, the main thing of note was getting a Protector’s Mark of Sanctification.  Didn’t use it right away, I spent a few days running permutations to figure out the best use of it.  But it was nice to finally get the next step tier 10 stuff.

The next night was Plagueworks and Crimson Hall.  Rotface, Festergut and Blood Queen were all done on Heroic, the rest on normal.  I managed to walk away with the Shaft of Glacial Ice and Precious’s Putrid Collar, mainly because I was the only Hunter on for that night. 

We did attempt Blood Prince Council on Heroic, but the Warlock had problems keeping the Kinetic Bomb’s up.  Well, to be fair, I also had some problems, but I could soak damage more than he could so the damage from the Shadow Prison debuff.  However, once back on normal, I could keep both Bomb’s in the air. 

We wiped a couple of times on Blood Queen, again mainly because of bite issues.  I know at one point I had to bite the main tank but instead went for a healer, which was a little hard to find which healer wasn’t bitten.  On the attempt we succeeded, I managed to get bit first, then screwed up my own first bite.  We always delay the first bite by a few seconds to offset the bites with the Bloodbolt Whirl.  I accidentally bit too soon because I was looking at the wrong debuff icon.  Fortunately, we were able to offset the second bites and everything went well from then on.

The Frostwing Hall was the next night.  We briefly tried Dreamwalker on Heroic again but again got overwhelmed.  As for Sindragosa, it was the ugliest clear we’ve ever done.  We constantly had extra people getting hit with Ice Tomb or placing the Ice Tomb in weird spots.  When we finally took her down, we had about half the raid Ice Tomb’ed and were down to a tank, a healer, and two dps, myself included.  I know at that point I was thinking “screw the Tombs, max dps!”  A lot closer than we like our victories.

We took a couple of swings at Lich King that night but we only had one really good try where we got to phase 3.  However, we got mixed up going into it and wiped.  The rest of them had us wiping in the middle of phase 2. 

I can’t remember if it was last night or the night before but my Hunter partner Rodman gave me the Saurfang’s Cold-Forged Band he had won the other night.  It was a sideways upgrade for him and figured it’d be an actual upgrade for me.  Which I appreciated greatly. 

Last night we were getting solid attempts into phase 3.  Of course the first one was messed up because we had gotten confused going into the transition phase and got taken out by Remourseless Winter.  Then for awhile we were not dpsing the last Val’kyr going into the transition phase because if we timed it right, we’d be in the transition phase and the Val’kyr would drop their person on solid ground.  Except we couldn’t get the timing right and kept losing people.

This night also marked the first time I got affected by the Harvest Soul.  All I heard on vent was “remember to interrupt the spellcast” or “cleanse it if you can’t.”  And what was I thinking?  “With what?!?”  Scatter Shot had been my “interrupt” spell but I had lost it after the last time I respeced.  I did try a Wyvern Sting but that didn’t work.  I just resorted to blowing the hell out of the Spirit Warden. 

There was one funny incident though.  It was a wipe but still funny.  As usual, I was on Ice Spheres.  When we transitioned into phase 2, an Ice Sphere had just spawned on the far side of Lich King, just out of my range.  As I ran forward to try and dps it, I saw someone race forward out of the corner of my eye.  Our off-tank had used his Nitro Boosts to rush in and because he saw the orb, he ran into it, thinking he’d just soak the damage.  Instead, I watched him run into it, and then get knocked clear off the platform.  He hadn’t been aware of the knockback and freely admitted that he probably shouldn’t have rushed in like that.  A wipe, but like I said, funny as all hell.

Otherwise, we were getting close and could feel it.  And finally, we did.  The Lich King went down and I finally got my The Frozen Throne (10 player) and Fall of the Lich King (10 player) achievements.  Not to mentioned my “The Kingslayer” which is the first title I’ve switched to since earning my “The Seeker” title.  I’ve earned other titles, but those two titles are ones I felt I really had to work at to earn.

I got to watch the video of his fall again, which was nice to “earn” the right to see this time (instead of just clicking the fountain in Dalaran.)  I also managed to win the Windrunner’s Heartseeker.  However, Rodman and I both agreed that the Zod’s Repeating Longbow we both had was generally better.  I ended up giving the Heartseeker to Rodman to run some dps tests on.  My dps is rather spikey in general so it’s hard to get a good read from my testing. 

And that was it.  We’ve sort of come to the point that we feel confident enough of clearing two wings a night.  And since we’ve done Ruby Sanctum, and get more bang for our buck out of Icecrown Citadel, our new raid schedule looks generally like this:  Lower Spire and Crimson Hall on Thursday night, Plagueworks and Frostwing Hall on Friday, then that leaves Saturday for whatever we fell short on.  Otherwise, Saturday, Sunday and Monday is all Lich King.  We’re not quite on “farm” mode for him yet, but damn if we aren’t close.