WoW, Raiding

So week one of legion raiding is in the books.  For us non-mythic types anyway.  And we got a bunch of bosses down!  I was with the guild for 5/7 on normal, and the guild went 7/7 and 2/7 on heroic.  I just couldn’t raid more than two nights this week (or, ever if I want to stay married)

Nythendra was a bit of a joke on normal.  We wiped once, and I died the second time when I trapped myself in a sea of green, then self-rezzed out of it.  Enhancement has some amazing utility and a great toolkit, but its survival is a bit crap at the moment.  Especially if I can’t plan ahead.  We then wiped on trash for a bit (actually we wiped on trash before Nyth, it might be the hardest part of the raid) and pressed on to Ursoc.

Our tanks took a while to get it down.  He requires a TON of tank swaps and healers have to stay on their toes, mostly to top up the tanks constantly rather than tons of raid damage.  For DPS you can tunnel like a kobold for 90% of the time then either step back or intercept a charge.  Not a challenge.

Night one ended with 9 wipes on Il’gynoth.  We were not doing the damage we needed in the right place.  I kind of disagreed with how we were handling some of the adds, but I also didn’t speak up.  We had a lot of damage but our application of damage was all over the place.  I also popped a flask, like a nub, with 10 minutes left on my existing one, on our last pull of the night.  Sigh.

We then went back a couple nights later, killed the Dragon, which was frustrating because pretty much everyone made dumb mistakes (including me, now healing instead of dps) before getting a pretty much perfect pull and crushing the boss.

Elerethe was up next, the spider/bird boss.  This was a LOT of fun, we wiped once just learning the fight then cruised through it with some sharp play, people avoiding damage, and heals keeping people up.  I think this was a fight I should have been DPS to be honest, but I can see it both ways.

Finally it was back to Il’gynoth.  The wipefest continued with more healers than the other night.  Our healing wasn’t the problem.  Our raid team was taking way too much damage.  going from 3 healers to 4 didn’t make a difference, going to 6 wouldn’t take a difference.  People have to not stand in bad.  Finally we brought in another DPS (who was already locked out from gear) and one of our DPS changed the way he was handling adds to allow him to not die as much and we had an amazing clear.  I went from spamming all my cooldowns and healing constantly, to spot healing and even doing some damage.  Looking at the logs I went from healing 49 million HP to 42.  The fight didn’t last as long but my casts per minute were about the same, but the damage I was able to contribute (and healer damage matters) went from 14 million (in a longer fight) to 22 million.  So I healed more HP / second, by using more efficient heals, with better throughput, AND did a ton more damage.  Oh and I was alive to use bloodlust on the final phase.  Might have made a difference.  This is one fight I’m NOT looking forward to on heroic.  I also got a bunch of gear.  I got a DPS weapon upgrade, I got boots, and I got a ring.  Not bad for first week of raiding in… forever.

This week I want a full clear of normal and I’d like to kill everything up to Il’gynoth on heroic.  I really think Il is going to be the big hurdle for us (and most other casual raids) Also I’d like to remember to take screenies on all the kills.

EDIT:  Found the Il’gynoth kill pic!

That someone hid me on by mounting….