It’s been a really, really, really long time since I spent more than a couple raid nights in total on a boss before the boss died. The last time it happened was probably either the Illidari Council or Archimonde, back with Apotheosis.
Wiping on Deconstructor the first night of attempts, after Razorscale went down, wasn’t a shock. What WAS a shock to me was wiping on him for the next 7+ raid hours after that. It was definitely all night Thursday (4 hours) and then just over three hours on Saturday. I know I went through at least one flask BEFORE we killed him, and I’m an alchemist.
At the kill, though, it was achievement-central!
Thank the good Lord. We really needed the moral victory. And hey, people stopped being dumb about the scrapbots and gravity bombs, although not the light bombs, apparently. Seriously, the collective unconscious of a group of 25 people is so WEIRD. I’m sure that my entire raid was comprised of reasonably intelligent people, but people act so oddly in groups that it calls their competency into question.
Anyways, we played with Ignis trash (horrible!) and Ignis himself (horrible!) for maybe an hour or so and then said screw it and went off to the Iron Council. Finally, a boss encounter (aside from Flame Leviathan) that we’d had experience with on the PTR!
They started me out healing the tank on the Stormcaller, but after three attempts, they switched me to the tank who was on the big dude who packs a serious punch, named Steelbreaker. He hits for a LOT, plus has this stupid ability called Fusion Punch:
Inflicts 35,000 Nature damage to his target, and deals additional 20,000 Nature damage every 1 second, for 4 seconds.
Are you kidding me? 20,000 per TICK? Every SECOND? It wasn’t getting dispelled quickly enough. So we had 4 healers on that tank and every time I got the raid warning for Fusion Punch and saw that he was casting it (go go /focus), I stopped my cast and just started spamming my cleanse button. I only messed up on that once because I’d forgotten to /focus Stormcaller. Whoops. In my defense, it was after midnight, I’d been raiding since 7:30pm and had had 6 hours of sleep in the last 30 or so hours. :P
Anyways, the first attempt in which we managed to down Steelbreaker was our kill for the encounter.
That reads Stormcaller Brundir.
It went remarkably well after Steelbreaker died, except, oh yeah, WE HIT ENRAGE. 10 minute enrage, if anyone’s curious. But that’s because half the raid was dead from various Overloads and lightning… thingies or whatever. Should be much cleaner next week, now that a lot more people know how the fight works. I have to admit, it was a lot easier for me to heal the encounter, having wiped on it about 20 times on the PTR. Server lag when cleansing Fusion Punch FTL. We had our prot pally tanking Steelbreaker on the PTR and made her use Cleanse on herself AS WELL as one of our priests doing it. And still, we would wipe. Freakin’ PTR POS… Anyways. Council down.
Monday, I guess it’s Kologarn, another boss we tried on the PTRs. Didn’t do too badly, as I recall. I ALSO recall that the frigging eyebeams suck a LOT. Stupid movement fights drive me crazy. I can toss out Holy Shock, hope for an Infusion of Light proc and then instant Flash of Light… and there’s always Lay on Hands if needed. I really do miss my reduced cast-time on Holy Light, though. I honestly don’t ever notice if I crit extra after Infusion of Light procs.
I hope we get to Hodir on Monday – it’d be nice to get him down. I’m fairly sure we’ll be able to do it, because he’s the last boss we had experience with on the PTR. We all got pretty good at standing on snowdrifts. I do occasionally feel like I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off when I heal that fight, mind you, but hey, as long as we’re staying alive, it should be fine.
Ulduar is proving to be challenging, but not so challenging that I think it’s ridiculous. I would put these early bosses at about… maybe about the same difficulty/coordination level as Karathress, when you’re not quite geared for him and your healers are running OOM and praying that the tank remembered to hit shield block or whatever. So far, the mechanics are pretty simple. Don’t stand in bad shit. Don’t group up too much.
Nothing good is dropping in terms of loot, either, so I’m sitting pretty at the top of the DKP list for basically anything I want. Plate bracers dropped off Deconstructor, but to be brutally honest, my MAIL Bands of Mutual Respect off Razuvious were pretty much better than the ones that dropped. With a gem, the mail ones were just about equivalent in spellpower and better in crit than the Horologist’s Wristguards. Plus the Wristguards have mp5 whereas the Bands have haste. Now, admittedly, I’m getting seriously close to the 1-second GCD cap and drop way under that when Heroism is up, so I’m getting very close to being haste-capped, but honestly? Those Wristguards are TOTALLY a sidegrade compared to my current bracers.
Some preliminary research on loot from MMO-Champion showed me the other day that most of my real upgrades are off hard-mode loot tables. Does that mean I’m going to have to sit on my DKP until we get those hard-mode fights down? Or does that mean I’m actually going to have to settle for MP5-heavy sidegrades for the next couple of months? Stupid Ulduar itemization…