ICC10 - 3/4 Clear!

When did I turn into a raider? I know it's nothing compared to a real raiding player but I find myself having ventured into Ulduar numerous times over the last week or so, plus a lengthy foray into Icecrown Citadel!

This week's weekly raid has been Jaraxxus, and I've tried FOUR times in PUG raids. Not a single time have we made it past the Beasts. This would be slightly depressing/annoying, except every time I join a group I get to play the Jaraxxus song which makes me super happy.



A bunch of guildies must have enjoyed the Razorscale raid last week, because someone organized another shot at it. We had mostly the same people, and it went great. One wipe on Leviathan, which honestly I expected. A bit of shuffling around and re-emphasizing each vehicle's primary objective, and down it went (though it was close again). I was also amused when I got Three Car Garage, considering I think I've only killed Leviathan three times total on Mardak.



We one-shot Razorscale, and then moved onto a boss only a few of us had seen before, XT-002 Deconstructor. I had only fought him once before, and that was as Rades. Everything went great though, and we took him down first try. I nearly dropped the ball when he did his groundpound raid-wide damage attack though, as I wasn't expecting it the first time.

After that, we cleared up to the boss whose name I can never remember, Koralon. (I always get him mixed up with the VoA bosses.) Most of the guild oohed and reacted when he rose up in the ravine, which was fun. We went over strats and jumped in, but this one didn't go so well and we wiped pretty quickly. We decided to call it a night there.

The next day, Mardak got invited to go into ICC10 with a PUG group, and it was...iffy. The DPS was pretty low and things were taking a lot longer to kill than they should, but we figured we'd down Marrowgar and be content with that. We did kill him on our first attempt, and the Sliver of Pure Ice dropped, but another caster in the group won the roll. We then proceeded to wipe a few times on Lady Deathwhisper, and we stalled for about half an hour while people dropped, joined, disconnected, etc.

Finally we had a good group and tried her again, and though we did much better, we wiped again when the adds got out of control. It took another two tries but we finally killed her, which was extremely satisfying. Nothing for me dropped, but that was fine, I was just happy to down her, and now I know the fight very well for future attempts.

Next up was the Gunship Battle of which I'd read so much about, and it really is as much fun as everyone says. It's also really easy. I had some fun blasting around before the fight (and during it, when I was bored and no one needed healing). Very sad that you can't use the jet pack and remain in tree form, though. I then won the roll on Midnight Sun, a nice upgrade from Mace of the Earthborn Chieftain. Normally I keep my old weapons for at least a little while as mementos, but I hurriedly disenchanted it and another random unneeded purple to get a few abyss crystals, shattered them, and had a basic spellpower enchant on my new dagger before we were ready for Saurfang.

Saurfang kicked our ass a few times, what a brutal fight. It's too bad too, as we had a pair of extremely competent hunters on frost trap/kiting duties for the blood beasts, while putting out great dps. Good communication, great tanking, good heals, but we just couldn't get him down. One drawback we had was a boomkin druid who didn't have Typhoon, which apparently makes the fight way easier. He also didn't have vent so communication was tougher to tell him what to do.

From a lore perspective it's an awesome introduction, with Saurfang walking up and confronting his now dead, scourge-ified son. =( Very sad. I don't see any way the Alliance version could compare to how rad this was.

In the end, three or four wipes was enough and we called it for the night. We're going to try it again tonight and hopefully be able to get a full clear, which would be very exciting to achieve.