Lo-Quality WoW

Well, we’re coming in towards the reset later tonight and I’m in a situation that hasn’t happened in the past several months:  No Raids Tonight!  Tuesday and Wednesday were the regular 25-man ICC.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday we completely cleared our 10-man ICC.  Sunday we cleared Ruby Sanctum.  So for once, there’s absolutely nothing on the docket for tonight.

The lower spire we pretty much sped through, even on heroic.  We’re still tweaking the Deathbringer Saurfang fight but Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship we pretty much have down.  Usually it’s something simple as losing a person to the Mark of the Fallen Champion or similar, and we usually reset the encounter then experiencing a full wipe. 

We then made our way to the Plagueworks were we just couldn’t seem to get it together.  I think that part of the problem was that it was our Death Knight doing the tanking again.  Not that he isn’t good, he’s just more comfortable as dps and he’s more geared towards that end.  But we repeatedly wiped on heroic Rotface and eventually called it a night.

The next night started with Crimson Hall, completely on heroic.  As expected, the Hunters were tasked with the Kinetic Bombs, made just that much more difficult with the Shadow Prison debuff.  I know our other Hunter died because he moved too much while trying to handle the Bombs, and it’s really difficult for me to do it by myself.  Not that I didn’t give it a try.

Actually, I think the fact that I’m a Survival Hunter helps.  I have a little more hp than most MM Hunters, which allows me to move a bit more and just take the damage from the Shadow Prison.  Fortunately, the Kinetic Bombs didn’t appear on opposite ends of the room but I still had to soak up a lot of damage in helping to juggle them.  And often times that left me out of position to do any dps on the boss.

Which made it extremely lucky we managed to down the Blood Council and finally get our Heroic: The Crimson Hall (10 player) achievements.  I think we were only seconds away from the berserk.  It was a long fight and I was really worn out but it was nice to finally get the achievement.

Blood Queen we also more or less have down on heroic mode.  But here’s where things got interesting.  Our other Hunter had to leave, which wasn’t that big a deal since I’ve done solo Hunter duties before.  However, we couldn’t find a replacement so we decided to tackle Frostwing Hall on normal with only 9 raiders.

And we did it!  Dreamwalker on normal we are pretty much a lock on.  Sindragosa, however, tends to mess us up good but we actually managed to one-shot her.  I think we were all a little shocked at that, we usually have one or two missed tries.  And actually, the only issue we had was people breaking the Ice Tomb’s too early. 

Then again, I think this was the first time we had a completely experienced group, who knew exactly how to run the tactics we use.  I know our Shaman used to put his Ice Tombs in odd spots but he was perfect in his positioning.  The 25% buff also helped us to blast through the Tombs quickly and return to hitting the boss.

So as expected, we’re overpowered on normal, but still undergeared for certain heroic encounters.  I’m sure we’ll soon be at least trying Frostwing Hall on heroic.  Not sure when that will be though.

The next night of course was Plagueworks.  Festergut and Rotface on heroic, with Professor Putricide on normal.  And we pretty much cleared them in less than an hour.  Which gave us quite a bit of time to play with the Lich King.  Which was good, since we had a couple of people who still hadn’t completed the fight.  Most of them had seen phase 2, but phase 3 was still a mystery.

Actually, ironically, this was actually the first time we had more than our regular 10 people on, so we were trying to mix and match the group from the start.  I offered to sit out but they realized that our normal “dual-Hunter” setup was very good for our strategy for the Lich King. 

Either way, it only took a few tries before we managed to down the Lich King as well!  And we hadn’t even reached our regular raid end time as well.  So, we were sort of at a lost since we usually leave a couple of nights for the Lich King run. 

Which meant we decided to go back to Ruby Sanctum last night.  For the most part, we didn’t need anything from in there and we’d already shown we could do it, so it wasn’t even on our radar until we wrapped ICC up early. 

Of course, it was good for my guildmate since he hadn’t been around for the Ruby Sanctum run last week.  We also ended up having to PUG a Warlock.  I know our off-tank hadn’t been with us last week and I think one more dps hadn’t been with us, but I wasn’t sure.

We had no trouble with any of the mini-bosses.  In fact, for General Zarithrian’s fight, just the two of us Hunter’s and our pets were able to destroy the add coming up behind us that the off-tank for that section (we had switch to a three tank configuration for simplicity sake) started complaining about having nothing to do!

Halion himself was another matter.  Now, the strategy we worked out last week for phase 2 was that everyone would gather on the tank’s right side, the dragon’s left.  But except for the shadow Priest and myself, everyone else went on the other side.  Which wouldn’t have been an issue except that I have to stay at range to do dps.  Which wouldn’t have been that bad except that it kept putting me out of range of heals and I kept dying from the Dusk Shroud debuff. 

And considering I was only one of the two dps set to travel to the physical realm in phase 3, meant very, very, bad things.  In fact, we ended up having out Death Knight dps bounce back and forth between realms to help even out the dps somewhat.  Which was good and bad, but definitely kept the fight interesting for him.

Yet we still downed Halion.  Wasn’t the cleanest or neatest kill, but he went down.  Which leads us to tonight.  Most of the other’s have done the weekly, ICC and RS are both down, and I already know we’re not going back to the 25-man.  So I’m not sure what I’ll do tonight.  I might not log on at all.  Or I may just go fishing.  Maybe both.  I could use the break.