Thursday, May 29, 2008

A guild First, And I Was There!

Thats right, it was my guilds first kill of Hydross the Unstable, our tanks had just gotten the resistance gear needed for the encounter, and I was there. Yeah Baby!


Everyone put on their Sunday best for the pic. Thats me in front of the bracer's in the red hat and shirt, and before you comment it's not a skirt damn it. It's a kilt, man dress whatever you want to call it, but it is NOT a skirt whatever Lady B might tell you. Mjm had somehow managed to turn himself into an ogre, and one that I couldn't attack /sulk. He spent the next while magically shooting arrows from his belly with no bow in sight. P had his farming gear on complete with enchanted gardening implement (A rake if I remember rightly), and everyone was generally having a great time.

Ok enough with the self congratulatory segment and on with the show. I promised mistakes, and I can deliver. Oh yes, once again the incompetent warrior has been killing himself so you don't have to. I should get some kind of public service medal for this.

A little background on the raid, or at least the part of it I was most attached to. We had a proper melee group, consisting of Two Rogues (C and I, btw I it was great to finally hear your voice, and having a second giggler in the raid wasn't that bad ), a Feral Druid (K unleashing some kitty pew pew), An Enhancement Shaman (Elemental L had gone Enhancement for this one), and a MS/Slam Warrior (yours truly). This group meshed really well, everyone was delighted at the buffs the others provided, and we chatted in party chat throughout the raid, even jokingly dubbing ourselves "Team Awesome". As part of this group my personal dps jumped by more than 200 compared to my Tempest Keep run, while I was alive that is :(.

As usual I will start with a little commentary on the trash. Those Bog Lord Thingies were great fun as I got to beat on them to my little warrior hearts content. The only thing you have to remember is to move those little legs as fast as you can when the ground turns green, and as an added bonus when it dies you get to beat up on some little guys he spawns. The bigger groups were tough on me, not because my job was dificult in any way, but because I was surrounded my so many mobs and not allowed to hit Whirldind :(. The urge to smack that button and watch the number fly was almost irresistible. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that would have probably meant a wipe since I could very well crit those CC'd mobs, putting a DoT on them making it impossible to re-sheep.

Hydross Take 1.

Brand new content for us, and wouldn't it be amazing if we one shotted the over sized puddle?

Well predictably we didn't. The first transition went well enough, with a couple of loose elementals but the pally tanks getting on top of things pretty quickly. It was during the second transition that I found out something very obvious but very important for melee dps. Don't stand near Hydross during transition! That mean ol' bugger turned around and two shotted me at the aggro wipe :( This is what the rest of the fight looked like for me.

Look familiar?

It should do, it's pretty much the same view I had when fighting Al'ar in Tempest Keep on monday.

"Here we go.", I thought to myself, "way to prove to everyone that your a contributing member of the dps, but only for the first 5 F###ing seconds of every fight.". But aggro happened as it tends to and we had 8 adds out at once. Hello wipe city.

Hydross Take 2.

We do our corpse run business, get back, buffed, hyped up and ready for another shot. During the corpse run there was discussion about how best to manage aggro during transitions so we were feeling pretty confident about the whole affair.

GO GO GO!! /wipe.

An over stimulated Warlock cast Curse of Shadows before the tank had picked up hydross, causing him to cross the transition line immediately and spawning 4 adds. We run for it, and some of us even made it out. Not me I got to the first lift and decided to see if I could solo him. Would you believe I couldn't? Hydross sure as hell did. Two seconds later I did too.

Hydross Take 3.

This time round everything clicked. Transitions went smoothly, adds were brought over to Hydross so that AoE damage could nuke him too, dps wasn't over aggroing (well a couple of Warlocks kicked the bucket, but thems the brakes) and all was happy in the world.

I was having to stop dps much earlier than the other melee because I couldn't have a DoT up on the big guy during transition, and every crit I did refreshed my DoT. With a 47% crit chance thanks to Team Awesome I was critting way to much to risk trying to get a last hit in.

I more than made up for this pause in dps when it came time for the adds.

See those four adds?

Lets hit 'em all at once! Muhahahahahaha!

Sweeping Strikes,Whirlwind and more big shiny numbers than you could shake a stick at. All these were mine during the add beat down parts of the fight :)

Then it came time for the final burn. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Heroism, Death Wish and Recklessness, if theres a better combination out there I don't want to know about it.

Anyway Hydross goes POP and much shouting on vent and dancing was had by all. Then I get this whisper.

"You're alive? But you always die." -_- It was Lady B who had obviousely been casting around for my body only to find me alive and dancing with everyone else.

We distribute the loot and head on to do The Lurker Below. A fight which most of the raid (not me) had done before.

Lurker Take 1 ... And Only.

This fight isn't hard for melee dps. you only have to do 3 things.
1) Don't over aggro. (obvious)
2) Move back when the Lurker does his Whirl thing. (hits everyone in melee range and knocks them back)
3) Jump in the water when the lurker does his spout thing. (you get hit by this and it's the end of the fight for you. You'll be dead and knocked so far back there will be no hope of a combat rez.

Guess what, I manage to mess one of these up in the first minute of the fight. I just didn't move back fast enough when it came time for the Lurker to whirl. He musta smacked me with a crit because the water finished me off before I could even hit my space bar to try and jump out. As if that wasn't bad enough I just floated there watching the fight until about 65% before asking K for a battle rez. It just did not occur to me to ask for one before that, even though the only other person to die apart from me was an unlucky warlock who caught a face full of spout (some nights it's just not good to be a 'lock).

After I got the battle rez those big shiny number where just not the same, they were still big and shiny alright, but just not as big and shiny as before I lost all my raid buffs.

I also seemed to be trying my damndest to die again when it was time for the adds, I just wasn't taking into account the extra dps (thus extra threat) that Team Awesome's passive buffs and totems were providing me with, and attacking the mobs before the tank had gotten enough aggro on them. If it hadn't been for the quick work of a couple of healers I would have been Naga bait. I later learned that one of those healers was Lady B so thank you Lady B, and a big thank you to the other random healers that threw health my way, I love you all <3 style="text-align: center;">Fillet of Lurker Anyone?

Thus ends my first excursion into SSC.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grats on your first run through SSC. I need to take a page out of your book and bring some formal dress for kill shots. They are up on the guild website for the world to see after all and a Tauren must look his best!

Sara said...

My stepfather plays the bagpipes (I know weird, but why do you think I love the interwebz so much?) and is forced to wear a kilt to his jigs. He says it's called a kilt because the first guy who called it a skirt got kilt.

Gratz on 'dross!

Stuntyone said...

@ chris: Thanks and everyone should have a nice set of "Town Clothe" for big events like this, or even just for when your chilling in Ironforge :)

@ Auzara: I love it, I'm going to use that one next time Lady B calls it a skirt. :) And thanks :D

The Incompetent Warrior