Tanking Krosh Firehand

I think I've mentioned that Primogeniture has kind of taken a break from raiding. We just weren't getting the numbers, people signing up and not showing up, too many people wanting to do other things... so we decided to stop. Turns out, the members of our raiding guild actually like to raid though, as we have a pretty big sign up list for tonight's SSC run. The plan is to kill Lady Vashj, so we'll see how that goes.

But last night, we had about 20 people online, so I quickly threw together another Mag run (cake walk) with a follow up Gruul's Lair run. We had to Pug a few people, but that's how you make friends, right? lol. The only hiccup with Mag was that a lag spike caused him to get off most of his Blast Wave, but he was at about 10% when he started that, so we still downed him without a problem on our first try, albeit number of deaths though.

Then the majority wanted to go to Gruul's. Since I was the only mage, I figured I should stick around. We got another mage when a few people left after Mag, but he was still wearing Bloody Surgeon's Mitts, so not exactly up to par. He wasn't on Vent, so when I died the first time and I told him to try to pick up Krosh, he didn't do it. The second time I died, somebody had relayed the message to him, and he was trying to tank Krosh, and stole his shield before I could. He claims he didn't, but since I was on vent, and he wasn't... and I was leading the raid, I blamed him for that wipe. To be completely fair though... it was an alt toon. I'm just saying.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to glorify me in that this is the first time that I've tanked Krosh Firehand. Had a few pieces of PvP gear to get my stamina up. Got handed some Chewy Fel Taffy (which I didn't realize can stack up to 4 times) to make sure my Spell Steal wasn't resisted. And after a few times of awkward positioning, we killed High King Maulgar and his buddies.

We finished it off by slaughtering Gruul in like 4 growths or something like that. Yeah... the boss nerf bat hit hard.

Updating Mods

Patch 2.2 has been out for over a week now. Most of the mods that are still being updated have been updated by this point. If they're mods you can't live without, go get them now. No more excuses. I've covered a couple different mods such as Omen (necessary enough that Blizzard may eventually integrate it into the game) and Deadly Boss Mods (for the raiders and PVP battleground folk).

On some of the bosses, it is almost impossible to win without having some type of timer to know when events are coming up. Gruul the Dragonkiller is one of those bosses. Having at least a decent idea of when the shatters and silences are coming are essential. So, go get those mods.

We had a guild run to Gruul the other night. Out of 25 guildies, something like 11 had the required Deadly Boss Mods. So, we told everyone to get it. What seemed like 15 minutes later, there were still only about 17 people that had it. What's up with that? Are there certain people that are that leet that they don't need it? Grr... required raiding mods are there for a reason, people. Kk... enough of my rant.

One-shots with a Side of Wipe Fest

After what seemed like miscommunication for our first wipe on High King Maulgar (and not counting that attempt), we 1-shotted both High King Maulgar and Gruul the Dragonkiller. Once again, one of the huge parts of these fights is simply understanding everything that goes on, and then using the strategy given. I'm convinced that if all 25 people were to go and read the same strategy guide some place, there would be minimal attempts (assuming sufficient gear, of course). We had 3 T-4 pieces go to 2 tanks, so that should help keep those guys alive. :)

Since all 25 people were already assembled, we thought it would be a good idea to head over to Magtheridon's Lair to see what he was all about. We had one person that has experience with Mag, so after reading the fights on Bosskillers and Wowwiki, we hoped that would be enough. It really wasn't.

There are 4 groups of 3 mobs that you have to kill before you engage in the main event. And while we didn't have to do a corpse run (SS, Self-Rez, and Devine Intervention ftw), it was pretty embarrassing. I didn't learn until this morning when I read about the trash on Wowwiki that I'm supposed to be one of the ones on top of interrupting the Shadow Bolt Volley. Well no wonder we kept getting nuked by those. /sigh

And while Mag himself can be done with 4 tanks, I'm not sure the Raid Leader understood about the whole getting stronger thing with the death of each Hellfire Channelers. We had our druid tank 2 of the channelers, the last two we planned to kill. Oh yeah, that's a noob mistake on that one. (Noob for the raid leader and all the people that didn't speak up about it.) So, we had Channelers running all over the place, and it was a fast wipe. For that attempt, we didn't have 2 of our stronger healers, and some people had to leave and so we had to call it after only one attempt. Of course, it felt like about 4 attempts after suffering through the trash. Well, now that I know a little more about the trash, hopefully it won't be so bad the next time we try it.

I ended the night by skilling up fishing a bit. Got about 20 skill points while talking to friends to hit 196. (Yeah, I'm behind in that quiet a bit.)

Gruul the Dragonkiller Slayed

Here's really the key to killing Gruul. Just don't die. Yeah, I may have oversimplified just a tad. But yes, last night we killed Gruul the Dragonkiller. The shatters really make for an interesting battle. Every 45 seconds or so, you get thrown up into the air in a random direction, and then have about 5 seconds of increasingly slowed movement to get into a position away from other people until you are stoned (no, not that way), and you can't move for 5 seconds. Then, if you've done a great job, nobody's within 15 yards of you and you won't take any damage. If there's too many people next to you (or just 1 too close), you'll die.

There's other mechanics to the fight as well. But I found a great spot where I could run against the side wall just before the Ground Slam (which throws you in the air). Running into the wall usually would result in me just standing in the same place. And as long as nobody else was thrown into me, I wouldn't take any damage at all.

At any rate, the exciting part is downing him. But also is exciting is the loot that is dropped. Our guild got the [Leggings of the Fallen Hero], the [Leggings of the Fallen Champion], [Shuriken of Negation], and something else that I really don't remember. I thought I had my T4 leggings in the bag when I rolled a 96; but, Encore (one of our warlocks) pulled through with a 100. They would have been nice to have, but I'm a patient man. Just one of those things that because I rolled so high, I thought it was mine. But, that's the luck of the roll.

So Close on the Dragonkiller

We ventured into Gruul's Lair to take on the Dragonkiller himself, last night. Because of various conflicts in schedule, we took 6 (or 7, I forget) mages with us. We were a little short on healers having only 6 for about an hour, and then 1 had to leave. So, we got Gruul down to about 17%. There were improvements on each subsequent attempt, but we just couldn't down him last night.

Our main problem, obviously, was that we just didn't have the heal power we normally do. Two of our most equipped healers weren't online; and overall, we just couldn't pump out the same HPS. So, all in all it was a valiant attempt. If we had tried a couple more times, we probably could have had it. But we'll try it again tonight, and we should be successful.

One of the things I was kind of baffled about was Scorch. As I've mentioned before, when you have 5 Scorch Debuffs up on the target, everyone does an additional 15% fire damage. One of our mages is Frost, so he doesn't count, but the rest of us are Fire. The odd thing was though that there were only 3 of us that were renewing the Scorches. Ideally, we only have to cast 1 scorch each, and with 5 of us, we've got the full 15%. I really noticed this when two of the other Scorchers had died, and the rest of us were alive. I first noticed that I was the one that kept renewing the Scorch. So, I did a little experiment and let the debuff run out, then I started Scorching it up again. I had to cast all 5 of the Scorches.

In theory, the highest DPS should be casting Scorch the least. Let him hit with the Fireballs to cause maximum raid damage. The lowest DPS should probably be the one to hit with the improved Scorch every 25 seconds or so. Everyone can pitch in at the beginning to get the full 15% and also to maintain a lower aggro at the beginning. I just don't understand how as a fire mage, you would completely ignore this spell. /boogle

The Hard Way

It has come to my attention that sometimes I do things the hard way. I think, in a way, I'm also what you would call a "pleaser". I work fairly hard to help my friends, no matter what the situation. I always remember back in high school on a Friday night when a friend called me because his car was stolen. So, I left the group of friends I was entertaining at my house to drive the 5 miles to find that my friend had simply misplaced his car, and had since found it in my travel to his aid. (Before the days when everyone had a cell phone, obviously.) I was not angry; in fact, I was relieved that he still had a vehicle. And it became a running joke between friends.

But I also recognize the importance of completing goals and accomplishing tasks. Especially when I'm leading others, I have a strong desire to do the job right and fair. From the little "hard core" raiding experince I have, it seems that the typical Guild Master or Raid Leader (certainly not in my guild) tends to have this lofty attitude and isn't usually willing to listen to others, or just be mean or harsh in general. Sure, it's a pain to get whispers from 24 different people in a 25-man raid. But sometimes, there's valid input. "Hey, maybe this strategy might work better... just a thought." -or- "What do you want me to do?" -or- "Cat's on fire, gotta go." And for a guild that seems to have a surprisingly large amount of "mutes" on Vent, it's usually much easier for me to track the whispers then the goofing off that can happen in raid chat.

On Monday night, the group we had going into Gruul's was pretty solid. We had enough of each for role in the fight. I think High King Maulgar was taken down about 20 minutes after the first trash mob, and there were plenty of attempts on Gruul himself. Last night, however, it was a different story. We had to be a tad creative in our attempt. There was 1 less tank, so we had a rogue tank Blindeye (the priest and first to die). Our 1 warlock did a great job taking care of the felhounds, but they still ran rampant every once and awhile. (We usually use at least 2.) Not to mention that some of our key people that live in the same area were having connection problems like no tomorrow. (Just hope the storms gone now.)

It was a learning curve, that's for sure. I'm certain we could have pulled it off if we didn't have so many lag/connection issues. There were some issues when we first started the attempts, like getting the pull down, but we worked them all out. Just not a lot you can do when one of your tanks goes offline mid-fight. So, that was the hard way, I suppose. A few other players had logged on in the last 30 minutes or so of our attempts, and we brought them in and substituted out a few people. Also to change it up, another raid leader took over. Not that anything at all was done or conducted differently. After the change, we took them down on our second attempt. I guess that was the easy way.

I got a number of complimentary whispers thanking me for doing a great job with what we had to work with, which I really appreciated. I think I got one smart alec comment after we downed him that our previous failures were "Lei's fault". Oh well, boys will be boys.

High King Maulgar - First Kill

Last night was our second attempt at High King Maulgar. He's now dead. Well, technically because of today being Tuesday and the server maintenance, not really sure if he's dead or alive... but he was dead last night when we looted his corpse. He dropped [Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender], [Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender], and a third item that I totally can't remember at the moment. (Help me out, guys.) Those two pauldrons went to two of our druids, so gratz Justicar and Melanion.

The fight is pretty hectic. By far the pull and first few moments are the hardest. Each time you kill one of the 5 ogres, the fight gets a little easier. I honestly lost track of how many attempts we had. Our main problems were keeping the mage alive through the fireball that he'd have to take and keeping the Main Tank alive against High King Maulgar's hard hits. The warlock, Olm, didn't really give us any troubles (for the most part), and Blindeye, the priest, wasn't really an issue either except for the occasional big heal that he got off in some of the attempts. Kiggler got lose a few times, and I had to help range tank him. Me with about 20 nature resist. lol.

Our final attempt was one that wasn't starting out the best. Our Main Tank had to be battle rezed. The fight as a whole seemed slow and not one of our best attempts. But as we continued to trudge along, there was a clearing, and there was about 23 of us left to face the High King alone. After his enrage and a few deaths (including myself), we defeated him. So, the first time we got all the adds down, we 1-shotted him. (Isn't it amazing what the right qualifiers can do to a statement?)

To me, it's one of those fights that's really hard to learn (for some unknown reason), but once you get it, it's kinda a piece of cake. I say that now having killed him only once. lol. Like somebody said last night, the fight is very similar to the Moroes fight. You can watch videos, read strategy guides, but you don't really learn the fight until you start doing it. And at first it seems very difficult. And then something just clicks, and it becomes an easy fight. I'm not sure we've had that complete "click" yet, but I know things were falling into place, and we finally did it... that's the proof.

Gratz to all of Primogeniture. We've all contributed to the success. This week, let's kill the High King and Gruul!!!