Progress indeed 6/12 ICC10 , 3/12 ICC25

Well well well, it's been going well the last days. It's exhausting, for sure, but fun.

The last days, I killed Toravon the new (and last?) season boss.
I also, after three bloody years, went into Mount Hyjal and killed Archimonde.
I could see it was a beautiful raid in the old days, in fact the zone should much more used as it is now (locked!). The raid itself seems a bit boring, with waves coming and bosses coming, but then again, it was too easy now, I was doing about 15K AoE damage :)



Archimonde fight seemed also very easy, don't know if they nerfed, as I got several reports of how it still wiped 80-raids, when ppl didnt position properly.



Today Love was in the air, so I headed to SFK and downed a new boss trio, funny and easy to do. Supposedly drops the rocket mount. I once saw that once. Pray :) I never got lucky with the Kodo or headless mount in 2 years.

As to ICC25, on Friday we tried Saurfang, it came down up to 10-20% but then it was not possible to do anything, as soon as a ranged dps died, adds started to stay alive too long, boss healed too much and that was it. Dunno how to fix it tbh, besides getting more dps into the raid. Hopefully the gearing in ICC10 we did on the weekend will help.

So, ICC10. We came, we won. The first four bosses came down with no wipes, everyone showing skill and dps, so I got my 4/* ICC10 achievement easily :)



Then, Plagueworks. Oh boy, much more difficult.

Festergut is a dps race. We wiped a few times, and had some bad luck on spores, as they spawned 2x on ranged or 2x on melee a few times. But down he went.




Then, today: Rotface. Oh man, it's not a dps race, but it's damn hard to focus on aggro-contention, dps, switch sides due to the vomiting, watch for marked on yourself to run to offtank, watch for offtank position, watch for explosion, watch for which place to run in case of explosion. Too many things to watch for.

I did 1 mistake on aggro, as our MT is not exactly an aggro machine, and with Bloodlust at 10 secs and the Discipline Priest spell buff (forgot the name) I got, I went skyrocket aggro, soulshattered, and went again skyrocket, and then... died. HATE THAT :((
And I did 1 little mistake taking a bit long to find the OT after an explosion. Have to train where to go (entrance), but with all the maelstrom, who knows where the entrance lies :))

Anyway, a few wipes later, down he came !



Then we went to see Herr Dr PhD Professor Putricide.

Didn't seem tough, tbh, but it requires huge ranged dps, proper continuous repositioning, and a good knowledge of when to kite, when to stand still, when to hug and when to spread, which side to go, etc. Anyway, I think I will shine there, much more than I will ever shine with Rotface.

Got some gear, like waist, and could have needed a wrist, but didn't.. Hard to check what to need with all the nearly equivalent gear around.

Next week I'll have ICC25 with 2 other >>GS locks (5.6 or so), so my top dps times will be over.

Time to rest, no more raids until Wednesday, I'm tired !

ICC25 Second day - Gettting better

Hmm, today was a fun day, except for the part that I get tired like hell after 2 hours. The last 90 mins are an excrutiating pain, although fun. I'm too old for this :)

Anyways, Lady Deathwhisper came down after 3 attempts. I managed to find myself always going top dps, as I barely have to move to switch between dpsing the boss shield and the fanatics. The 2nd part seems fairly easy, as the ghosts can be spotted in flight, so they give more than enough time to move away, and they despawn fast too.

Now, the funny part. After we went for the gunship battle, I found out that I had been wearing my Chef's cooking hat, instead of my T9 4-set-bonus maker gear !!!

Anyway, dps races are ugly, I don't like them... except when I get to be on top at the end, using a Chef's hat and missing a tier gear and bonus! Then it IS funny !

[Slamming an old bearded head on the table]

It's also gratifying to see that my class is able to countepart some weak gear (I still use my old lvl 200 +haste/+crit trinkets). My class, meaning, my class, not my class. Got it ?

I got a necklace roll from the gunship, although I died at the beginning, although I think I did what I could do, but the damn mob came for me even with soulshatter, meaning tank hadn't touch it after about 5 seconds. Tough luck. It was good to see the fight, though, how ppl use the packs from ship to ship to kill the mage while the tanks controls the chief,

Finally, we tried Saurfang, and boy was he close (<20% or so), but not enough. He gets enraged at the end, and since he always healed a bit after a while, it was not doable. I still did well, I think, doing the most damage on the adds and coming 2nd overall dpser. Shadowflame becomes useful here, since the CD is fast and the stuns effective on multiple adds.

One of the tries, I decided to switch my +84 haste trinket for the +84 crit, bringing my haste down from 550 to 460, and ... what a difference (for the worse). I did about less 1K dps. So... no doubt, +500-600 haste is the way to go.

I also found out that with more haste, I'm really using a lot (a LOT) of mana, and the pool is going down very fast, even with replenishment from other raiders. May be it's time to go for 0/13/58 fom 3/13/55 and get +446 hit.

My new ICC25 necklace will help.

Fingers x-ed for tomorrow.

First RGC-Silvermoon raid

Last night (bad choice, patch day, with immense lag spikes until 22h) was the first official ICC-25 raid.

Result ? Some mixed feelings.

People with will to do it, but a little underdps, a few ppl that were coming for the first time without having looked at the strategy.

One thing I didn't know about, and costed me 2 tries with highest damage taken, which was that coldflame can be mitigated by staying in the boss's hit box. However, this brings melee range, and therefore Saber Lash. We never did like that in ICC25 on Chromaggus. But we had better healing there, I think.

Overall, I got a lot of damage, and tbh, I don't know why. Too much Flame, too much Lash. The only thing I know, and that's weird, is that I had vigilance from my tank and during those 5 tries I got top damage taken (all but 1). At the 6th, we killed it, the warrior tank was replaced by a paladin, I lost vigilance and... I was no longer top damage taken, I was 8th or so. At the kill, I messed up with my macro, so I ended up missing a lot of Spikes :(

Weird. Vigilance lessens my damage taken. So was I 3% worse ? OMG !

Anyay, my dps was not bad, I was top 5, ex-aequo with a hunter. What was also weird was that the 3 rogues were the top 3 dps, with one of them with a similar GS.

I wonder what is going on.

At the end we tried Deathwhisper, (pulled all mobs at once and I my Rain of Fire come on top, which says that it's not so bad) and I made a misjudgement, so didnt start immediately dpsing the adds. After a bit, there was a loose one killing our top healer, so, bye. But I also found out that I dpsed the boss's shield on top by miles. So my rotation seems fine, even when switching to mobs.

I heard a comment from a guildie about the melee's reflect shield, and it's bad (when it' up) if a caster hits it, as it reflects to the whole raid with massive dmg. Have to check that, don' remeber that issue being raised on Chromaggus, or ever. Or may be he was talking about the need for the melee to do massive dmg to the shield in order to break it for us casters to hit the mob.

Tonight we go again. She'll come down, I swear to Elune.