Good News, Everyone!

It's inexplicable, really. We've been trying for weeks to take Rotface down, bringing him as low as 3%, but never quite making it before being overwhelmed. Then, last night, everything just clicked - slime pools were circumnavigated, oozes were kited expertly, and everyone got the hell out of the way when they exploded. Fully expecting to spend at least an hour on the fight, we proceeded to one-shot it. *shrug*

What this meant, of course, was that as soon as we headed over and killed Festergut (who is essentially on farm status now - though he refuses to acquiesce to my demands for footwear), we would be facing Putricide for the first time. It's an interesting fight, and frankly seems less fiddly than the ooze-wrangling of Rotface. There are, in fact, oozes to wrangle, but dealing with them is wholly reliant upon proper player movement and sufficient dps, rather than a somewhat unpredictable pathing A.I.

We made solid progress as we learned the fight, bringing the good Doctor down to ~50% on our last attempt. It will be interesting to see how we handle phase 3; on one hand, no more gas clouds or volatile oozes to deal with; on the other, the tanks and healers will have more to worry about...

In other news, I've made the switch to a Marksmanship spec - having acquired the two-piece T10 bonus, its inherent potential for abuse in conjunction with a properly-timed serpent sting and chimera shots made this a foregone conclusion, and my dps last night definitively bore the assumption out.

It Never Gets Any Easier

The guild's raiding has, indeed, progressed beyond Saurfang in the weeks following my last post. In the interim, one group - once - has managed to take down Festergut. Full stop.

It is somewhat analogous to an unholy amalgamation of Patchwerk and Loatheb, except the spores in this fight, rather than boosting your DPS, boost your immunity to the incoming massive raid damage. The DPS is up to you, and boy howdy, do you need a lot of it! Festergut has a five-minute enrage timer, and 9.4 million health in his 10-player iteration. That means, assuming two tanks and two healers, a minimum of 5k DPS from everyone else, or you lose.

Yeah, we lost.

That brings us to tonight's attempt at ToGC. We were feeling cocky - ok, I was feeling cocky - I mean, we've cleared ToC dozens of times, and now we've even got a few pieces of gear from the next tier of content! What could go wrong?

...let's just say they don't call him Gormok the Impaler for nothing. Those poor, poor tanks.

There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Last night, I made my long-delayed entrance into Icecrown Citadel, and lo, it was good. Well, pretty good.

Being that it was in the midst of the holiday weekend, this was something of an impromptu event, with only a handful of signups and the rest made up on the spot. There had been two full raids earlier in the week, which meant most of our raiders' mains were locked out, leaving about half the raid to be filled with slightly less well-geared alts. I'm fairly sure this was what determined the upper limit of our progress for the night.

In broad overview, we successfully moved through Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, and the gunship event; we put in several very good attempts at Saurfang, but ultimately couldn't take him down. I found all of the encounters so far quite enjoyable. I don't believe any of them are difficult in terms of execution, but they do require everyone to pay attention, making for some engaging, interesting fights.

The Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is definitely a gatekeeper for the next segment of the raid. Last night our gear was well and truly checked, and found... wanting. The guild has taken him down in previous weeks, with our best-geared raiders, but that gear margin is clearly the difference between success and failure here. By our last attempt, we had what I feel is a sufficiently tight strategy: slowing the Blood Beasts with a frost trap while focusing fire on each, one at a time, kiting with everything we've got - Distracting Shot, Concussive Shot, Disengage - yes, hunters, rejoice, for this fight makes us specifically useful! The problem we ran into was the amount of time it took to kill each Beast; by the time the first was down, the second had made its way to a delicious healer. If there had been two hunters in the raid, I'm sure we could have kept them both occupied, but as it was, our DPS just wasn't sufficient. We ended the night on our best attempt, with Saurfang at 15%, and his mighty cleave dropping me to 0%, the bodies of my comrades strewn about the terrace.

Still, I'm happy with our effort, and looking forward to killing the bastard for many weeks to come.