Rades' first foray into Icecrown Citadel
I'm not sure what's going on, but I like it! This week has been a blur of achievements, raiding and loot, compared to previous weeks of running the new 5-mans or farming heroics.
Immediately upon logging in, I saw people looking for more for the weekly raid, Marrowgar. I tossed my name in the hat and was invited, and brought along a healer and off-tank from guild, too. Other than the off-tank, I was probably the lowest geared person. That combined with the knowledge that Beast Mastery is the "worst" hunter raiding spec made me a little apprehensive.
However, I was worried for nothing. Clearing the trash to Marrowgar was surprising, as I was leading the raid with 5.5k-6k dps. I didn't know if this was a good sign that my damage was high, or a bad sign that everyone else's damage was low.
Marrowgar went down easily, with me topping the meters once again. I was glad to see that regardless if you're healing or dpsing, it's still a relatively simple fight. I shouldn't have been topping dps though, not as BM, and not being vastly outgeared by some of the other people I was with. But I suppose this is what happens when you raid in PUGs rather than as part of a raiding guild.
Now I know I'm no Frostheim but I'm pretty satisfied with those numbers. The Marrowgar damage meter Frost posted in the above link shows him at roughly 1.98 million damage dealt, with the next closest being at 1.44 million, so I'm actually pretty thrilled being right in the middle at 1.77 million. At the same time, I can't help but be a little disappointed that both mages (one of which is FANTASTICALLY geared) were out-dpsed by the tanks.
We decided that we might as well try Lady Deathwhisper too, and our first attempt went amazingly well, despite most people not really understanding about the adherents' immunity to magic damage. and the fanatics' immunity to physical damage. As the only hunter, my job was to stay on Deathwhisper the whole fight, though I found I had to switch off to help with adherents depending on which adds got resurrected. Had it not been for some bad luck (one of our resto druids innervating, then immediately dying, so even when he was battle rezzed he had no mana), we might have one-shot her. We got her to 30% before we wiped.
Aside: why does everyone insist on saying that the fanatics are immune to "melee" damage? It's not melee, dammit, it's PHYSICAL damage! There's a big difference! You're neglecting hunters, probably the most important class for this fight! Who's going to be more valuable to the fight, a lumbering warrior who has to run all the way across the room to reach the adherents to kill, or a hunter, who can keep serpent sting up on Deathwhisper while simply turning and filling the adherents full of holes? Another reason why hunters are awesome.
Everyone was excited, saying how good a first attempt that was in vent as we flew back. Inwardly, I felt a sense of danger - since we did so well the first time, I had a sinking feeling the next attempts were doomed to failure.
Sure enough, things fell apart completely the next two attempts. I'm not sure who suggested it, but for these attempts we had one of our DK dps member stay on the boss instead of me, so they weren't wasting dps time running to the adds. Made sense...in theory. I'm not sure if this is why we failed two more times, but after that we decided to go back to the first method since it had worked perfectly. It worked - we blazed through phase 1 and took her down nice and easy in phase 2. Interestingly, I got chased by ghosts 3 times in phase 2, and since I had moved to the back of her platform, just ran back and forth there far away from everyone. I didn't see anyone else getting ghost-chased...maybe it's not completely random?
DPS for Lady Deathwhisper:
We also beat the gunship battle, though it took us two tries, mainly due to some communication issues with the away team (tank not jetpacking over fast enough / dps jetpacking over too fast). But as someone else in the raid said, "I don't even mind wiping on this fight." It's just too fun to get upset over.
There was one point in one of the failed attempts where a funny (to me, at least) incident occurred. We had just finished off killing the minor adds that appear on the Horde ship, with just the sergeant left, when I looked behind me and saw our cannons still frozen. In my best BRK impression, the next few seconds went like this:
"The cannons are still frozen, shouldn't the ice be gone by now?"
"Yes, which means the Alliance mage must still be alive and channeling their ice spell."
"Why would the mage still be alive?"
"Well, we saw one of the dps DKs jetpack over too fast the first time and be obliterated."
"True, that was pretty funny."
"And didn't the away-team mage also just say they were down?"
"Yes, a few seconds ago."
"So at least 2 of the 3 away-team damage dealers are dead. And their mage is still alive."
"Yes..."
"SO GO KILL THAT MAGE!!"
"AMG JET PACK AWAY!" /jetpack
"Okay, there's the mage. Blast him!"
"On it!" /arcane shot
"...say, what's that on the deck there? Where you're about to land?"
"NO TIME FOR SIGHTSEEING BRAIN, MUST SHOOT MAGE!" /pyro-mounted hand-rocket
"I think you should look."
"Fine. Looks like...5 horde corpses?"
"You got it."
"The away team?"
"All dead. And what's next to them?"
"That would be the Alliance General. The untanked, furious...waiting-for-me-to-land, General."
"This is going to be painful."
And it was. I think I was dead before both feet had even hit the deck.
In the end though, we emerged victorious. We stopped at Saurfang, with vague plans to maybe come back later and check him out. It was a great night for loot, too! As the only hunter, I got the Handgrips of Frost and Sleet, a very nice upgrade. The guildie druid also got Scourgelord's Baton, and the guildie pally tank also got the incredibly nice Neverending Winter.
Challenging kills, Ashen Verdict rep, good loot...plus we got to hang out with this guy.
Post a Comment