One Wild (or rather Feral) Night

February 4, 2008 No comments

*Druid warning*

Introduction

Last Friday, while staying up longer than I should, I was tabbing through the LFG Tool in search for something that may help in my druid advancement. Finding groups that let a feral tank is not hard on our server, so I’m pretty fast group-bound if I want to.

So, at 21:30, i stumbled upon a few people who wanted to continue their Kara ID. They already had Attumen and Moroes down, and I got a whisper a few seconds after entering the tool.

I was asked to offtank, and was invited quickly since I did not scream and run away immediately.

The raid had only 4 people at that moment, but it grew over the next half hour or so. After inviting a MS warrior, they seemed to realize that they were running out of tank slots, and asked me if I could maintank the show. I’m not relunctant to take important positions, but I’m not overly confident in my feral gear. I surely paid attention to all those nice bear-tank guides and blogs out there, but I’m only socketing green gems at the moment, due to lack of gold. I cringed a bit, but said yes eventually.

We started to head over to the ol’ tower as soon as we had 9 people in the group. I had mixed feeling about our healers. The first holy paladin seemed just right, sitting at mostly blues and a few epics and one or two greens. The second paladin was retribution specced, but was willing to heal and decked out in Karazhan healing gear. So we were looking for a holy priest to fill the 10th slot.

Around 20 minutes later we invited a very well-geared healing shaman, because there was no single holy priest in sight.

Okay… no shackles… we are starting at the opera… Skeletal Ushers… ugh…

“Well, we’ll survive it” I thought, and we started to zone in and buff up.

Pre-Opera Trash

The first few pull, consisting of two (or one) Skeletal Ushers mostly, went not that well. We tried to establish aggro on both at the same time, but it did not work as intended. We lost 3 people on each double-pull, but once we were done with those mobs, things ran smoothly.

Opera: Romulo & Julianne

The group played together quite well. We reached Barnes without any further unnecessary deaths. We got Romulo and Julianne as the current act. I was surprised how smooth it was executed. The raid leader did a good job. He pulled the dps classes away from Romulo a bit late though. Around 4% health the last one broke off, I think. I had to switch to spamming Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire, in order to build some aggro without killing the poor guy early.
As soon as Julianne’s last few percent were announced, I queued a Maul and spammed Mangle and Swipe. The both went down at the exact same time.

I was happy to see Romulo’s Poison Vial drop, a decent kitty upgrade. I tell the raid that i have need, and so does the warrior. The hunter does not want it, but the retribution paladin rolls too. And he wins.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m perfectly happy to be out-rolled. But I fail to see how this item can be of great benefit to a class and spec that is only wielding two-handed weapons.

Well, whatever. I shrugged it off and congratulate everyone for a job very well done.

Pre-Maiden Trash

Next, we were heading back towards the exit to enter through the back door. But since the Maiden was still standing, we took a quick side-step on our way out to say hello.

The trash before her was not much of a problem. We had warlocks, so we could Banish some adds, and the rest were properly swiped and kept in control.

Maiden of Virtue

Not much to say here. The fight went very well. Our health was running a bit low at the end, but with 2 paladins the Repentance was not very stressful.

She dropped the Totem of Healing Rains, that made our Shaman very happy. Somehow I can’t remember the other item, nothing exiting I suppose.

Pre-Kurator Trash

We decided not to do Nightbane and head towards the menagerie. The ghosts died without much hassle, but the warrior offtank had the tendency to initiate the fights and made it hard for me to gain rage and therefore aggro. After a few such incidents, i switched to cat form and let him do the pulls. I know I hate aggro-bouncing as a healer, so I thought I could spare them some stress.

I had some problems with the Arcane Anomalies, mainly because I never tanked them before, I suppose. Lost a healer on the first blink.

The Kurator

A very fun fight to maintank, I enjoyed it very much. A bit on the boring side, but fun nevertheless, if you like large numbers, that is.

We wiped once, I suppose my healer fell asleep. It was around 0:30 in the morning. My health just dropped and not enough heals were coming in the keep me up. *meh*

The second attempt was better. I was introduced to the floor at 3%, but the raid managed to bring him down anyway. We rezzed everyone and looted.

So, he had the Gloves of the Fallen Defender with him. I was thrilled to see that, of course. No priests and only one warrior in the raid. Looks like I stand a chance.

We both announced need on the token, but then no one rolled. I suppose he was as superstitious as me, believing in rolling last netting better results. Since the seconds stretched, I finally closed my eyes and submitted my “/roll”. I slowly open them to see a yellow 59 at the screen. He rolls immediately after me and scores a 28. Wow, i just got my Gauntlets of Malorne from PuG run.

It was around 1:00 in the morning now, and we did a ready check if we wanted to continue. I did a “Yes” because I would have felt very bad a leaving right after getting my token. I was tired though.

Pre-Aran Trash

Things went very well, again. The trash was no problem. We even managed to do the Spell Shade groups without a raid member kissing the floor, although no shackle was available. After clearing the room before Illhoof, we decided that with 3 warlocks and 2 paladins we might a well go in and collect some free loot.

Terestian Illhoof

We put 2 warlocks on Seed duty and made sure everyone hat a target macro for the chains. We thought the fight would be no problem. Things went the other way, however.

The imps were no problem at all, the damage was slacking however. Illhoof did not receive enough damage and the chains did not go down fast enough. Around 30% we lost the first dps class. Around 10% we were no longer able to deal enough damage to offset the healing from the chains. Shortly after realizing this, he enraged and beat us to pulp.

I came up with the suggestion to switch roles with the warrior. He may not be protection specced, but he did a fine job with the adds and we had 3 healers. This way, i could strap on dps gear and take care of Kil’rek and the chains more quickly. Sadly I died a few seconds before Kil’rek went down the first time. Lack of heals I think. Somehow the assigments did not work out or some healers were sleeping. We wiped shortly afterwards.

We then decided to skip Illhoof and go for Aran’s throat instead.

Shade of Aran

I was more than a bit wary of this fight. The healers need to be fast and very aware in order to make the battle go smoothly. Since I had seen some strange healing issues over the last hour or so, I was not sure if concentration was too low already.

Nevermind, we were heading in anyway. I pulled my Flame Wreath raid-warning macro into my hotbar, put on my cat stuff and readied myself.

I finally understand why melee dps loves this fight so much. It’s quite relaxing and fun to do if you don’t have to watch healthbars and keep moving nearly all the time.

I had to pop a Rebirth around 55% of Aran’s health because we lost a healer. Additionally we did not out-damage the mass polymorph and super pyroblast, but he went down anyway. Quite a nice performance, considering it’s 2:00 in the morning i would guess.

He even dropped some tanking stuff, the Shermanar Great-Ring. Since the warrior wanted it too, I decided to pass on it. I had mixed feeling, it would have been a huge upgrade for me. But I just can’t bring myself to winning 2 items where other players go away empty-handed. It just does not feel right. Unless they behave badly, then it feels quite nice.

So we had a happy warrior and still some stuff left standing.

The End

We did a /readycheck to see if anyone wanted to log off and get some sleep. I wanted to, and so did 2 others. We then discussed a bit back an forth, since our raid leader wanted to continue.

Meanwhile the retribution paladin started to whisper me that he wanted Gorehowl so badly. I don’t know why he had choosen me, but it annoyed me no small deal. I didn’t really respond to him, mainly because i was wary of him behaving a bit childish earlier. Just sent some smilies back and hoped he would not stark to strike up a conversation.

The raid settled to doing the Chess Event and then call it a night. They inteded to meet again tomorrow, to clean up the rest. I said ok, let’s clean the trash and the log off. But that retribution paladin (I mentioned him earlier, did I? *cheeky*) thought otherwise.

He announced that doing all the trash now, without going to Prince would be a waste of his time, and that he would hearth now, unless we all agreed on killing the Prince now.

We told him quite clearly what we would do, and what not. He seemed to disagree.

He than did something strange. He quit he guild before our eyes. Told us they were all noobs (his fellow ex-guild-members, not us), left the raid and hearthed out.

We had a good laugh at that.