So we’ve been working on knocking out some of these initial heroic modes.
We got Heroic Chimaeron on Thursday, April 28th.
We did that during patch week, with people dropping offline like FLIES, man. So I was thrilled to get him down after just a couple of nights of work. 35 wipes all-told, then a kill on try 36. Woot!
Since, on the night that we killed him, we had 16 wipes before the kill, I was not expecting an easy second kill. Particularly given the comp we had.
This Tuesday’s signups were absolutely abysmal. We had 20 confirmed, 3 who hadn’t accepted or declined, 2 declined and then something like 7 “tentatives”.
I got a hold of the three who didn’t sign up for Tuesday and confirmed they would all be there. I got a confirmation from a tentative and decided NOT to cancel the raid ahead of time. It was a risk — I knew I might have to call the raid or split into two groups of 10 and I seriously hate both of those ideas.
Lo and behold, we had 26 on at start.
We went to BH, knocked that out and headed to BWD. I hadn’t done any raid rosters and I didn’t even make a raid PLAN because of all the different variables in who was going to be there. So we did Magmaw and ODS and swapped out a healer who was lagging and disconnecting (who had been DPSing for us on those bosses) for Fog, to come in as ret. So we did normal Atramedes and did it pretty damn cleanly. Two deaths total and we finally got to use heroism at the END of the fight instead of the start. Atramedes is my guild’s worst fight, I think, but we’re seeing improvement.
So then we’re looking at heroic Chimaeron. I had swapped the healer who was lagging crazily, remember, so we had 7 healers instead of the 8 that we got it with last week. However, last week, one of the healers was one of the people dropping offline frequently, so we basically did it with 7.5 healers as it was.
I figured “what the hell” and decided we’d give it a shot with the 7 healers.
We lost one of the tanks very early, but popped him back up ASAP. Then we lost a rogue and basically just ignored that. I figured that if we had any battle rezzes left towards the end (remember, we have a maximum of three on 25-man) we could pop him back up.
Then, with, oh, five seconds to go before Massacre, I have three people in my group with Low Health. Including me. I’d given the healers specific instructions, since we didn’t have a dedicated “floater” healer, to watch for 2 or more Low Health people in any given group as we approach a Massacre and to start from the right (or bottom) of the frames to help out that group’s healer.
I’m the bottom-most person in my group with Low Health, so I start healing the shadow priest — get her out of danger. Then I heal the disc priest in my group, who’s a tank healer and is more important than I am for the moment. And through it all, I’m praying someone, ANYONE, sees that I have Low Health. I probably should have ASKED for a heal over Mumble, but I didn’t.
Dead me!
(Part of me thinks my healers thought it would be funny to let me die like that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pre-planned. Mostly sure.) (I think.)
So I blow a battle rez on me by asking for a Raise Ally and am basically tapped out of mana for the next while, but everything ends up being fine but unfortunately, the shadow priest in my group died because I was running back to my spot and didn’t even see she had low health. ><
Two battle rezzes down, did I want to blow our last one NOW? I held off.
We got to the fourth feud and after that Massacre, I got our feral druid to pop up the shadow priest. We pushed, got another Massacre/Feud, which was very poorly timed and we got to P2 when most people were at about half-health. Eesh.
And then, Chimaeron/Mocking Shadows killed a total of six people before falling over.
I was sort of like “what the eff just happened?”. We one-shotted Heroic Chimaeron with one less healer than we generally have for this fight and had a minimum of issues.
“Well, I’ll take it!” I muttered to myself.
So by 10:23pm, after one hour and 23 mintues, we had done BH, Magmaw, ODS, Atramedes and H. Chimaeron.
We took our break and reconvened afterwards and decided to go play with Heroic Maloriak for the rest of the night.
We’re doing a LOT better with the dark phases! Not so good with the green phases. I’m going to have to go digging through the logs, but I’m pretty pleased to see us living through red phases, blue phases and dark phases compared to our work on him in mid-April. Basically, if we got a red phase first, we were screwed, because the sludges were still up for about 15ish seconds. Last night, they were mostly still up when we transitioned but only for a couple seconds, enough time to finish them off and get into position for the Scorching Blast. Amazing what a couple of weeks’ worth of gear will do, eh?
So it’s Heroic Maloriak on the menu for the next raid night and some more work next week, if need be.
Then… Magmaw? Atramedes? Should be interesting, at any rate.
I’m really pleased with the group and the progress we’re making, though. The repeat kills are HUGE and totally make my night when we manage a relatively easy repeat kill. That was something we were really bad at doing back in Burning Crusade. One week, we did 5/6 SSC in a single night and never did that again, I don’t think.
“Fun” stuff includes the targetting reticule bug. Being a paladin in raids, I don’t really have this issue.
Except last night, I did.
We’re there before Magmaw and I drop a feast.
Except my Raid Buff Status didn’t give out a raid warning.
“That’s weird,” I thought. And then I realized I couldn’t click my feast.
“Anyone see the feast?” I asked.
“What feast?”
“No…”
“There’s a feast?”
“I missed the feast?”
And the like.
“RETICULES!” my holy priest cried.
“Holy shit,” I responded. “Is THIS what you’re dealing with?!”
“YES!” came the replies.
“Wow. That is shitty.”
So here’s a screenshot of what LOOKS like two feasts, but the one on the right is NOT clickable and is ONLY visible to me. (Mostly to prove to my guild that no, I was not hallucinating.)
And in lowbie paladin adventures…
My lowbie paladin has caught up to my lowbie mage. Both are level 52.
I don’t know if I’m horrified or really pleased about this.
I do know that the XP is just insane with all the heirlooms and the guild XP bonus. It’s absolutely out of this world. I was level 50 for 45 minutes, I think it was.
Me, Fog, Maj and Entropia (another guildie) ran a bunch of dungeons today. Zul’Farrak, a ton of BRD (detention block) and a few Sunken Temples.
I have to say that I’m glad they redid ST so it doesn’t suck so bad, but I’m sad they covered up the hole in the center of that room. :(
BRD is glorious and delightful as always. I can’t wait to do the REST of the instance and not just the detention block. (Majik hates it, but he’ll tank for me anyways.)
I’m almost looking forward to Outlands stuff, though. I’m eagerly awaiting LBRS and UBRS runs, too. I think the Outlands anticipation is just because I’ll be THAT much closer to WotLK stuff, which I can practically do blindfolded after two years of running those dungeons.
My lowbie pally is a dwarf, but as soon as I hit 80, I’m going to race change to a human for the rep bonuses to the reps I’m actually going to need.
I feel like I’m on my shaman as a dwarf, anyways, especially with the heirloom shaman shoulders.
SPEAKING of which, wtf. I have Plate Specialization at 50, but there’s no heirloom plate healer helm? Ugh. I’m just going to stick with the mail, I guess, and be a scrub for quite some time, yet. Bonus experience trumps any and all stats.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. How about you fine folks?
Not to sound snooty, but as for healing the 3 people in your Chim group, always do SPriest ( and Affl Locks but we don’t have those) last (love you Srs and Dahrla!) They have self heals that at least maybe will help a tiny bit. Always get yourself first, always! Would have been a good time to use your HS too :P But on the flip side, I thought i was helping out on other groups but I am SO sorry I missed that one >.<
Sara – I followed my own instructions, though! I didn’t panic. (Much.) I healed left to right on my frames and hoped someone would get me. In retrospect, I could have bubbled, BOPped or possibly tossed out LOH on myself or even a HS if I still had one, like you said (I can’t remember). I’m not sure that bubble or BOP would work, but I should try that next time. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on Massacre.
Also, if I was going to sacrifice someone of me, Dahrla and Kaleri, sacrificing myself wasn’t the worst choice, given my instructions to the healers. Dahrla’s VE kept people up in the group in the ~10 seconds or so I was out of commission, except for herself, and Kal kept the tanks up, so I probably would have done the same thing again.
No worries that you didn’t get me. It’s a learning experience for us all, still. :)
(So you’re saying it wasn’t planned? ;))
It was planned – I overheard the whole thing!!! =P
Kidding of course. Altho, while measly please never hesitate to ask for an innervate. I’m purposely not using the 4 piece feral set to allow me to shift without worry, just for such reasons.
Bah, my internet troubles make me one of the least important people to keep up. Sorry, feel like I’m not pulling my weight because of it. I’m looking into how much it’ll cost me to switch services (but it would be to the same one that Mabs is on – we’ve seen how many problems he has, himself) and I don’t know if I want to pay to have his problems instead of my own …
Eh, anyhoo, what level is your lowbie group now? I just hit 58 (I think I’m almost 59, actually) on my hunter, if you need a dps to join you and wouldn’t mind me tagging along. I just jam buttons and have no idea what I’m doing, but he sure does do the same or a little more damage than random pug dps that I run across.
@Sara – While aff locks excel at keeping themselves alive on Chimaeron, their total mana inefficiency kills them. I have a ton of fun keeping myself at full health in between massacres, but I have to Life Tap a LOT more. Compare destro locks, who typically end fights at around 80% mana with one or two Life Taps at most. On top of that, with the change to Fel Armor (3% of any single target damage goes straight to our health) and a shadow priest’s Vampiric Embrace, we could feasibly go the entire fight only needing real healing during feuds, as destro’s single target nukes hit WAY harder than aff’s (Conflag, Chaos Bolt vs Haunt? Please, there’s no contest) and results in a pretty good chunk of health.
@Kurn – I think you’re still underestimating just how pro we are.
Congrats on Heroic Chimaeron! That fight took us a bit to master and is always one of those “iffy” fights for us – we might one-shot or we might take several attempts.
Heroic Atramedes: If your raid group is good about their sound management and beam kiting in the air phase, then I’d say that would definitely be a good contender for you.
Heroic Maloriak: We finally killed this guy for the first time last week after several (partial) days of attempts. Figuring out how you want to release the Aberrations and getting the AoE done right for the Dark phases are definitely the big keys, IMO. For us, we usually only have 3 melee in and go very ranged heavy. All the warlocks are Demo and run around in melee with their Immolation Aura and Hellfiring (I *think* that’s what they’re casting, at least). Hunters got a nice buff to multi-shot, too, which helps with AoE. I 100% agree that things get very dicey if you get a Red phase first after the Dark and you haven’t yet killed all the swills.
For the Aberrations, we decided that the 3+6/3+6 release strat worked best for us. That’s 3 before the Dark phase and we carry them with us alongside the swills and they died from incidental damage. 6 get released during the next two phases and are then easily killed during Green. Another 3 release right before the second Dark and repeat everything. Maloriak doesn’t always cast a Release Aberration before the first Dark, though, so in those cases we just release 9 during the first Red/Blue phase combo. (Remember, there are 2 Release Aberration casts during every Red, Blue, and Green phase, so if you keep that in mind then it’s easy to know which ones to release and which to interrupt.)
Anyway, best of luck on new bosses and congrats again on the kills!