Sindragosa Down

It's amazing what an extra 5% can do.

Our normal rogue is still MIA, but aside from that we had nine of our core ten present and accounted for.  I switched over to my ele shaman and we brought in our backup ret pally, and we flat-out steamrolled the place.  The first wing was fully cleared in a half hour, and Saurfang Jr. went down in just two minutes and five seconds, didn't even get half a bar of runic power.  From there we decided to skip the farm bosses and head straight for the Frostwing Halls.

We had our ret backup go holy for Dreamwalker; it was his first time healing the fight, so he had a little trouble stacking the cloud buffs, but not so much that we had any trouble one-shotting it.  The extra damage outside mowed down the adds so quickly that I had plenty of time to throw a bunch of extra Healing Waves on the boss between waves, and by looking at the meters it seemed that our outside healers had plenty of time to do so as well.  From there it was on to Sindragosa.

We decided to run only two healers, hoping the extra damage on the table would shrink the burn phase enough that we could kill her before the ice blocks and mystic buffet spiralled the fight out of control.  Well, let's say we were about half right on that.  The plan was the two ranged (ele shaman and warlock) would be on ice blocks, giving extra priority if one of our healers got iced; meanwhile, our enhance shaman would pop out a Maelstrom Weapon-powered Chain Heal any time our healers got stressed.  Suffice to say, they got stressed every time one of them was in an ice block.  And even more so when one was in an ice block while Blistering Cold was going off.  Yeah, that happened.  We lost three people due to a misplaced ice block during that, but by then the boss was at 5%, so we called for an all-out burn.

It was messy, it was close, but god was it satisfying.  Next week I'll need to get it on my main.

After that, we cleared out the Plague wing with nary a scratch and called it.  Thursday we'll wipe out the Crimson Halls, then it's on to the Lich King.  Can't wait to see those defiles.

Try Not, Do, or Do Not. There is no Try.

One-shotting Putricide last night was a great feeling.  With 9 out of 10 returning from Tuesday's nine-boss juggernaut (we brought in a fresh hunter for our missing rogue; a bit of a DPS loss, but the extra ranged capacity was certainly welcome on getting those oozes burnt down), hopes were high and ambitions were higher.  All that stood between us and the Lich King was some pesky bone dragon.

Eight wipes later, she's still there.  Taunting us.  Glaring at us with those vacant frost-coated eye sockets.  Laughing over an ever-growing pile of Tauren, Orc, and Blood Elf skeletons.  Our best attempt clocked in at around 13%, but it was still quite honestly a mess.  It reminded me of my former guild's early attempts at Mimiron back in 3.1.  So much going on, so many ways for a mistake to turn into an early death, and every early death compounded the issues of the encounter.

And that's where the frustration kicks in.  See, our restoration shaman we brought in this week was not running the most top-of-the-line rig in the world.  And no matter what efforts were made to minimize the effect of latency and framerate issues, he simply could not get himself clear of her Blistering Cold in time.  At all.  Over 8 wipes, he got hit with it 15 times, with most of the successful avoidances thanks to a Body and Soul-enhanced PW: Shield.  And when that didn't cut it, Aura Mastery, Hand of Sacrifice, and Guardian Spirit at least kept him alive long enough to Bloodlust at the start of the burn phase.  It's bad when a group needs to use external cooldowns on a non-tank.

Now I empathize with the kid, and up through now he's been a solid backup and a good asset to the guild.  He switched his main from his paladin to his shaman to fill a hole in our roster.  And on fights without such a narrow margin of error, or without the need for immediate reaction he's done fine... below average, but fine enough for farm content.  And he has never complained when he was sat for a regular.  But last night, despite that he himself offered to step out the second someone else logged on (a trademark of a mature team player if ever there was), no one showed up who could fill that 10th slot.  But we all stuck it out, progression bosses need whatever practice we can get, after all, and I (and most of the guild for that matter) are of the mind that it is better to raid and wipe than to have never raided at all.

We'll be picking up the raid again on Monday, hopefully we'll have some better luck.