Ulduar: Reset 2, Night 1.

I daresay we actually learned stuff last week! I only died 27 times tonight! ;)

I was a bit late to the raid, so I missed Flame Leviathan, which is fine by me. I loathe vehicle fights. But I got pulled in for the rest of the night, which meant XT-002 Deconstructor, the Iron Council and Kologarn.

Let us discuss XT-002 Deconstructor TRASH for a moment, because that took us longer than killing the boss did. Last week, the trash was very bugged, so Blizzard removed it. Well, it was back tonight and boy, did we have trouble with it. How do you CC crap that’s mechanical? Everything from kiting, to Chains of Ice…

Of course, until we figured out that we had to CC at least some of the pull for the trash mobs, they had their way with us.

Ouch. And I wear plate, too!

Anyways, once that got taken care of, once we got the hang of the trash and STOPPED PULLING the damn boss by mistake… We did that three times. >< First time was one of my fellow holy paladins. Second time was the raid leader’s mirror images. Third time was a resto shammy. Really infuriating to die three times to a boss you weren’t even trying to pull.

The sweet part is that after eight and a half hours of attempts on XT-002 last week, we got him on our second try tonight. And a fragment dropped for our priest lead, bringing his total to, uh, two fragments. We also got Heroic: Nerf Engineering and Heroic: Nerf Gravity Bombs like last reset, which was nice for the new people in the raid. I understand they also got Heroic: Shutout on Flame Leviathan again, too.

Off we went to Iron Council! Just like Saturday, I was on the Steelbreaker tank, healing and mostly responsible for Fusion Punch cleansing. Which, I might add, I did like a damn champ. I think my cleanse key might still be angry with me because I mashed it so hard. :) We only did it three times, downing the council on our third attempt. Once we had Stormcaller Brundir down to about 50%, I popped my Iron Boot Flask for Heroic: But I’m on Your Side, as did about half the raid.

And so the gear juggling begins! Ancient Iron Heaume dropped. Stat for stat, it’s better than the Valorous Redemption Headpiece: Higher ilvl (good for FL), more stam, more int, more armor, more crit, more haste, less mp5. I took it, because I was the only holy paladin in the raid at that point, because it’s a better helm than my T7. But it might just have to sit in the bank for a while, because how can I give up my 4-piece set bonus?

I currently have helm, hands, legs and shoulders from the Valorous Redemption set. I also have my Heroes’ Redemption chestpiece. But I have (and am using) the Chestplate of the Great Aspects. That’s 3 Int, 2 Sta, 57 Armor, 27 Crit, 22 Haste,  38 Spell Power more than the Heroes’ chest. Given that I just gave up some crit in switching around my bracers, do I really want to lose another 16 crit to swap to the new helm and a very poor chest? I’m going to have to mess around with it all a bit, I think. But once I break my T7 up, that helm is gonna be my new one that I wear all the time, that’s for sure. Its stats are so yummy!

Of course, the helm itself… not so yummy.

Then again, it’s not like the Valorous Redemption Headpiece is much better, right?

I’m so glad we can turn off our helms…

Anyways, off to Kologarn we went. That was the longest part of the night, really, just dying to dumb eye beams and AOE damage. That said, I’ve been making use of Grid’s debuffs to easily identify people who are light/gravity bombed, slag potted and stone gripped, so that makes things a little easier. Never mind that I’m rarely on any of those people — I R TEH HEALZOR 4 TANK.

Seriously, I was on slag pot duty on our brief attempts at Ignis on Saturday and didn’t have the debuff view enabled because we went there unexpectedly, but seeing Stone Grip tonight on Kologarn is pretty damn awesome.

Kologarn died and we called the raid, since it was almost 12:30 anyways.

So, not a bad raid night. We skipped Ignis and Razorscale and, in one 4-hour raid, downed 4 of the 5 bosses we’d downed last reset. I expect we’ll go back for Ignis and Razorscale for progression or loot’s sake later on in the reset, but Wednesday, we head for Auriaya again, then probably Thorim, Hodir and Freya.

Should be a fun week!