Friday night we attempted our first guild raid. With 2 tanks, 2 healers and five DPS we checked to see whether we had Wintergrasp and as we did we went for Vault of Archavon.
Straight into the instance we worked our way fairly easily down to his room.
I'd read the strategies. I'd watched a video. Now it was time to see how we would do against our first raid boss.
Answer? Easy. With only nine players, 7 of which were what you'd call entry level raid geared we took Archavon down. Cue much whooping and hollering on in-game chat. Okay, so far so good then. On to Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum.
Well this was rather a change. Tried to do the first trash pull on the left and ended up wiping badly. Didn't manage to get any real kill order in, CC just didn't get used properly and we got the two big adds join in.
Reassembled and used some CC. Druid pulled with hibernate, pally repentanced one, I off tanked one and the group burned the other two down as the druid held them. Much better, all dead and no fatalities. Now on to the two wanderers.
Druid pulls one, I off tank the other. Druid shouts for the group to go on my target and I'm whaling the hell out of it with everything I have. His hit points aren't moving, and when they do they go straight back up again. Now we know what this is, someone has the debuff that heals when they hit, but they're not stopping. We end up with dps switching targets until it all gets too much and we wipe again.
A general discussion, repetition of tactics and in again. Same method, I off tank one and druid tanks the other. This time the dps are listening and if they get debuffed they back off until it's cleared. Nice and neat, two mobs down. Move up and into the first boss. We know the tactic, wait until the portal, go in and clear up then dps the boss. Wipe, I'd forgotten about the damage of the circles on the ground and stood in it while it killed me. My fault. Try again and either something glitched or it was very odd because even with a portal up we could still dps the boss. So we all stayed there and killed it pretty quickly.
Couple more trash pulls then onto the second boss. We decided to try ignore the portal, get in there and kill the dragon with the druid scooping up adds. Worked like a charm, dead dragon and no deaths. Onto the final dragon. This time we had to do the run into the portal to kill the add but it was smooth, I kept moving out of the circles and soon we had another dead dragon. Finished off the trash and onto the boss. Everyone got ready and our warlock appeared so we invited in and got him to the instance. 10 of us for the final boss.
I was main tanking so ran in and positioned the boss over on the left. We had our pally shouting the moves for the waves and to be honest it wasn't too difficult. I could see the ones coming from the right and moved Sartharion accordingly. However some of the melee got caught in a couple of waves and the damage was too much. Wipe.
Second attempt, same tactics but this time better movement from everyone, including me. Solid, steady dps and healing and soon the dragon was defeated. Two short raids in our first night. Not bad for a guild of casual, if mostly skilled players.
Then onto Naxx. We decided to pop in and see if we could down Anub'rekhan in the Spider wing. I hadn't watched the tankspot video (not expecting us to hit Naxx that night) so the first two attempts didn't go too well. I didn't do the run properly, trying to kite backwards rather than just running away. Cue frustrating time for all. So our bear tank, who had watched the video stepped in to MT and I switched to OT the adds.
Worked first time, though I had some hairy moments taking serious damage from the adds. Unfortunately our priest doesn't inspire confidence with his healing. I'm constantly hearing the less than 30% health warnings which always puts me on edge. Still, I didn't die and we got Anub'rekhan down. 3 raid bosses and a few wipes. Not bad for a Friday.
Little did we realise what was to come. Not enough people online on Saturday but by 8 ish on Sunday we had nine online and decided to hit Naxx again. Deciding to carry on in the spider wing we moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina. No problem on the trash on the way and soon we're standing before her. I ran through tactics over chat. Get all the adds down to low hit points then when she enrages kill one. Do the same each time she enrages then go all out when the last has died. I tagged Faerlina and pulled her a little distance away and watched as the melee killed one of the adds before the first enrage. On the second enrage they killed one of the adds then started in and killed the next. The damage from the enrage is mental, and with nothing to stop it, dead tank. The bear tried to step in but it didn't last long.
So we went back in, discussed the tactic again and began the fight. Much, much better. I called the enrages and the dps took the adds down in the right order, one per enrage. The end was still hairy because even with cooldowns and a decent if not spectacular set of gear she was still hammering my hit points. However she died, and no fatalities amongst our players so all was well.
Moved on through the instance clearing our way to Maexxna. Now this is a bitch of a fight. First time poor placement on my part made clearing the webs more difficult, and though the healing was solid I died because the necrotic spray was on me and the shammy was clearing it from the warlock. Too much damage and we wiped.
Second time we lost the paladin to a web wrap against the wall and the priest didn't switch fast enough to heal me and the group wiped.
Third time and we had the positioning sorted but between the spiders that were attacking the healers, the web wraps and necrotic spray we wiped. Same on the fourth try. This fight is not built for our group setup. Only two healers makes it difficult if you lose one. A shammy who is enhancement specced and pretty much our best dps can't do that and clear the necrotic spray very easily and having a single druid in cat form dpsing the webs and trying to keep control of the spider adds isn't enough. We only had 9 at this point and the only way we would have done it easily would be to add a healing shammy for poison clearing and a few more heals to help out. We'll go back to it, but we decided it was time for a change after four wipes and not even being close to taking the spider down.
So we moved on to Patchwerk. Should be fairly easy right? Standard tank and spank right? Well in theory...
Trash proved no real problem with the splitting the tanking duties up fairly easily. We cleared the area, positioned ourselves and the druid pulled Patchy. I think we had him at about 75% when I died. The priests healing simply couldn't keep up. To be honest I should have pulled and the bear should have been the one taking the hateful strikes. He's got more armor, more hit points but a little lower avoidance. Reading the strategies it would probably have been best to have him taking hateful strikes while being healed by the paladin while I take normal melee while being healed by the priest. We were probably knocking out enough dps to take him out, but with only two healers it's a pretty tough fight.
Overall a successful Friday and an annoying Sunday. We may get enough on tonight to try again for Patchwerk and Maexxna but if not there's always next week...
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