Again, a day late but this time I’m blaming it on the holiday.
(Some of you may have seen this post in your feeders yesterday. I fail at reading the calendar, still blaming the holiday.)
Last week we went and 2-healed 6/7 Firelands.
With our holy pally/disc priest comp there were a few moments that had me a bit tense, but on the whole it wasn’t too bad.
It helps that this pally is insane and thinks solo-healing Chimaeron is fun. (Yes, he’s done that.)
After our progress on Rag last Monday, we had high hopes for getting a kill this week.
We did one night with me healing with the holy pally.
The next night we swapped me out for the resto druid and I came in on Arioch.
Yeah.
I’ll cut right to the chase.
We didn’t get the kill.
It was right back to the short bus to hell.
Unfortunately, we did not get parses for both nights of attempts so I can’t compare how I was doing to the mage that we had the night I was healing.
But I’m pretty sure I was holding my own against him even though I’m a tier behind.
And even if I’m a bit behind him on DPS, I’m way ahead on the DSiS (doesn’t stand in shit) meter.
Quick – someone with too much time on their hands: make a DSiS addon!
After two nights of wipes on stupid shit we called it.
There was supposed to be a FL alt run on Sunday but only 6 people were on at raid time.
A guild that includes several former guild mates of DH are in the transition from 10 man to 25s.
They were short a couple people so Tir and I got to go.
We picked it up at Domo, which is where they normally break down into 10s so this was progression for them.
Now those mages I could not keep up with past the first 60-70 seconds of the fight. They looked so stylish in their full T12 while dominating the top of the chart. I think I prefer the T12 look to T11. Want!
But we had a lot of fun.
The Domo fight is a bit of a clusterfuck on 25, but seemed pretty easy once you get past there being people EVERY WHERE. Most of our wipes were due to a couple people unable to hear the raidleader in vent and missing the spread/stack instructions. But after that was fixed, he went down in short order.
ZOMG.
Raid bosses drop a metric ton of loot on 25.
I think one of each shoulder token dropped plus all the other goodies.
The guild we ran with normally uses EPGP, but with us pugs, there was open rolling on any item we were interested in.
I won the shoulder token with a roll of 58 or so.
And promptly had 2 offers to buy it off me.
5k? Seriously? Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll be getting me some pretty feathered shoulders, thank you very much. I am now mismatched as all hell.
Ragnaros on 25 with graphic settings turned up high turned out to be like watching a slow motion horror film. Engulfing flames practically blooms underneath you as you scream “Nooooooooooooooooooo!” while frantically spamming any and every button that might get you out of the bad. Hammer smash locations are hidden completely under the mass of adds and the explosions to kill them.
Lower graphics settings? Check!
We gave some really good attempts on Rag but eventually split into 2 10 man groups.
Now this guild has downed him on 10 before, but it’s not exactly on farm for them yet.
Tir and I got spots in the 10 man groups ahead of some of their guildies so we must have made a decent impression.
For once, I wasn’t on trap duty, yay! I did see a fairly solid damage increase from that. Having a spriest on traps is the better choice against an arcane mage, IMO. Their dots keep on ticking while they are flying while an arcane mage just twiddles their thumbs waiting for Rag to be back in range.
We got very close, but couldn’t quite seal the deal before people had to go.
Even though we didn’t get the kill, it still felt like progress. Getting the shoulders (and then my gloves as soon as I was back in Org) also rekindled a bit of my desire to raid.
Only being pulled in to wipe repeatedly on Rag had two consequences:
1 – It really grinds down on you when the most common sight on the same character is the “Release now?” option. Arioch was literally only living to die fighting Rag. Over and over again.
2 – Rag was the only fight he was seeing so there was never any valor or loot. I was being pulled in to fight the end boss of the current tier in last tier’s gear. Staying out of the bad goes a long way to the success of an encounter and I was fairly competitive with our better-geared mage, but how much more potential could I have in current purples?
I now have my 2-piece T12 and a renewed sense of hope. So even without the kill, Sunday’s run with the other guild was a win for me.
Of course, Monday night’s phase 1 wipes might have squished that a bit…
clearcasting 
Grats on the shoulders! I don’t think anyone could pay me enough to do 25 man anything (outside of non-Cata content).
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Thanks!
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Those are some stunning shoulders. /envy
Is your guild finding FL very comp-sensitive in 10-man? I know my healer’s actually been switched out on one fight simply so that we had enough interrupters. Our usual strat on another boss also pretty much requires that we have an spriest in the raid, which means one of the regulars swapping out for that particular fight.
Can’t remember needing anything like that on the previous tier.
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Not real fond of how far up they go, talk about blind spots, but the feathering is awesome.
Comp-sensitive? Yes and no. There are fights that would be easier if we had better comps, but we make do with what we’ve got.
For Alysrazor , lately we’ve been running with 1 real interrupter. The tanks pick up the first interrupt on each side while waiting for the eggs to drop. Then the enh shaman solos his side while the rest of the raid blows up the other druid so fast it can only cast once. I think now we’ve sent up 4 different classes/specs for killing her in the air. Some are better than others, but they all work.
For Baleroc we have yet to have someone successfully pull off a full crystal soak so we just have 5 DPS in the rotation while the healers take turns.
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The belf male shoulders tend to… well… float. maybe it’s intentional to match their potplants.
Disc priest/spriest combo can pull off a full soak twice per encounter. Pain Suppression at 12 stacks, then dispersion just before it becomes unmanageable. Otherwise we have a pair of druids who will alternate the second turn on each crystal and Barkskin through it.
Never considered just nuking one side, mostly because it involves hauling everyone across the field again, and early on we had issues with people being cleaved in the middle while moving.
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I think there’s something really different about our strats… why do they need to move across the field?
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We also are very heavy on ranged. We divide the room up the middle.
One tank, one healer, enh shaman on the left side. Other healer, other tank, remaining DPS (except the flier) on the right side.
They stay on their respective sides until it’s whirlwind time. Everyone runs around in whatever manner keeps them alive until she collapses
We stack on one point beside her (say, 6 o’clock) and the tanks are opposite (about 11-ish and 1-ish). She reignites, appropriate people grab feathers, run to their assigned sides and it starts again.
There is never anyone in the middle when a cleave is possible. Unless a tank gets disoriented and steals the other tank’s worm. But they’re good about adjusting for that.
If your shaman can’t solo his druid before the next one comes down, assign someone with a move buff and a healthy sense of self preservation to get across to help. I would think a mage’s blink or a warlock’s portal would be best.
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Did it last night with a DK and our ele shammy interrupting. Split the group in 2, fairly evenly. We had an extra healer compared to your setup, but honestly could probably handle it with 2 now that people aren’t flailing around in every form of fire imaginable anymore.
(our first couple of pulls were a bit scarring, okay…)
Now it’s just the Sons of Ragnaros to surmount.
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…to dps the druid on the other side? Our only dps shammy’s an ele who has the world’s worst luck with drops, so his gear isn’t great. Don’t see him soloing anything anytime soon.
Likely there is a strat difference. For one, our strat involves the healers helping out with interrupts. We’re heavy on ranged and weak on melee, which usually works out really well for us since melee is such a curse in cata, but it also means we’re not strong on interrupts.
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