Last night, we were again without our healing lead, my RL friend the resto druid. Last night, we were again working on Sindragosa.
For the first time in the six months that I’ve been in the guild… they asked us to get on Vent.
My guild doesn’t use Vent for raid instructions. At all. Ever. My RL friend can count on one hand the number of times she’s been on Vent for guild-related purposes, including officer meetings.
So last night, before we started working on Sindragosa again, they had us get on Vent so that the caster lead could call out Ice Tombs and the direction of Ice Tombs in Sindragosa’s final phase, which is what we were REALLY having problems with.
Not only that, but the tanks indicated, over Vent, when they were taunting.
I’ve raided for six months without Vent and I really didn’t miss it. But having the tanks calling out taunts on Vent was GREAT. I would swap my beacon, keep healing the tank and/or raid members, etc. I don’t think I missed a single transition, as opposed to missing a bunch in previous nights of attempts.
Anyways, we got Sindragosa down in three tries last night and then went on to clear out the Plagueworks, which we’d skipped this reset so we could get good work in on Blood Queen (we wanted, and got, a repeat kill) and get some real good time in on Sindragosa.
Of course, the healing officer, as I said, wasn’t online. So the caster officer, who’d been giving healing instructions for Sindragosa, asks me to do healing for the Plagueworks.
… oh crap.
I loaded up my trusty healing assignment mod, HealOrganizer, for the first time since, oh, SEPTEMBER, and then, through trash, struggled to remember everything my RL friend had ever said about the upcoming three fights. It wasn’t made easier by the fact that we had a new holy priest and a new resto druid in the raid, who I hadn’t really analyzed in the last couple of raids (hi, I’m not actually an officer, you know), so I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to handle things.
First up, we went to Rotface.
I put myself on the MT and infections (so I beaconed the MT) and healed those with infections. I put the disc priest on the MT. I put the resto druid on the OT (kiting slimes) due to his mobility, along with helping out on infections and the raid. I put the two resto shammies on the raid and had the holy priest on the raid.
While we had a cleansing totem dropped in error (sigh!) we still one-shot it. I would have liked the resto druid to help me out a little more with infections towards the end, because we lost a couple of people that way, but overall, it worked out and we one-shot Rotface. Whew.
Then I had to figure out Festergut. I put me and the disc priest on the tanks. I put the two shammies, the druid and the holy priest on the raid and strongly encouraged the shammies to chain through the active tank after the second spore and through Pungent Blight. Had we not attempted (twice) to do the achievement (in which BOY did people screw up!), we would have one-shotted. As it was, it took three attempts, but he died.
On to Professor.
I put myself and the disc priest on the MT, put the shammies on people with Volatile Ooze, gave free reign to the holy priest and the resto druid, reminded people to stand on the left when we were on that side of the room, reminded them to watch out for Malleable Goo, not to stand in green slime or near orange viles, told the priests to use GS and PS at their discretion and to stack up on the Volatile Ooze people if at all possible.
First wipe happened because the tank who was the abom got way behind on slime pools.
Second attempt was a great kill, with just one person dying at the end, and it was to Malleable Goo (and it wasn’t a healer, so I didn’t care so much). I popped DS/DS, I did a lot more casting of Holy Light than I normally do on that fight (as per my own analysis from 2 weeks ago) and we got him down easily.
Whew.
And then, it was about 1am. One hour left in the raid.
Every boss in the instance was dead. Except for the Lich King.
So up we went to The Frozen Throne.
Epic.
Our best attempt lasted less than three minutes. Hilarious.
We’re extending our lockout this week. I need to farm up a crapton of mats, I think. This is going to be huge.
I have never actually raided anything harder than Ony with out Vent, and I have no clue how you could manage doing well with out people being able to call out information as needed. As you said, knowing when tanks are going to switch just seems like something that is just handled much easier by voice.
I mean, I can understand people not liking the chatter that often is accompanied by large raids in vent, however in a well run guild, I should think that isn’t a problem…
Either way, good luck with Arthas!
The key is being aware of the fight mechanics, I think. Impales on the tanks on Northrend Beasts? Just know at what impale number the next tank will be taunting. I’m sure I’m missing something like stacks of mystic buffet on the tanks in P3 or something, so I’ll need to get Grid to display that for me somehow so I can keep an eye on the tanks like that.
It was a HUGE adjustment for me to go from having used TeamSpeak back in the day and Vent from then on to go to no Vent. I struggled a lot with the transition. And then, at some point, I just became comfortable with it. I can listen to music now. I don’t have to listen to people with creepy voices. I don’t have to say something on vent and get creepy tells from people going “don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound hot!!!!”… It’s nice. Hopefully, we won’t make the use of Vent something that is required or habitual.
In my old guild, though, I loved Vent. The people in the raids were mostly friends or people I liked and respected and admired. And I did definitely like barking orders in the middle of a fight. There was a night, our first-ever on Bloodboil, where my microphone had died hideously to a freakily unfortunate mayonnaise accident, during my officer meeting prior to the raid. So I was typing out the strats and assignments in-game.
This one enhancement shaman, who had definitely imbibed a bit too much that evening, was clearly alt-tabbed and was like “Kurn? I’m sorry, I haven’t read up on this guy. Can you explain please?”
And I’m typing furiously, going “HEY! OVER HERE. I’m typing!!!”
“Kuuuuurn. Is Kurn even here? Kurn? Where are you?”
“/rw I’M TYPING BECAUSE MY MICROPHONE IS DEAD.”
“Kurn?”
“/o FFS, someone tell her to tab back in.”
“[shammy], tab back into the game, please.”
“OH!!!!!!!! KURN! THERE YOU ARE!!!!!!!!! I DIDN’T SEEEEE YOU!!!”
…
So everyone has to know that you’re typing and to expect to look at raid chat for instructions if you’re not going to be on Vent. Ready checks are used frequently. Raid warnings and announce macros are used constantly. There are a lot of ways to send information through the game without using a voice client and it leads to better playing, I think.
Back in the day, I’d call out things like “Death and Decay! Run!” but, in reality, Rage Winterchill’s Death and Decay was a HUGE, GLOWING RED zone that you’d have to be blind not to see. But people would still die if it wasn’t called out.
In this guild, people *move*. haha. The problems we were having were “which direction to go with the Frost Tomb”.
Anyways. Thank you, I’m more than a little terrified of tonight’s raid. And shoot, I haven’t gone farming…