Rotface[25] Down

So, Wednesday started off looking damn good.  We one shot everything up to Saurfang, who we still two shot.  We then start our way down the Plagueworks, and face Festergut, whom we proceeded to wipe on for two and a half hours.  Healers missing their CDs, Ranged missing spore stacks, melee not running out when we had two spores in the middle, ranged chaining the vomit due to not spreading out enough.  You name it, and it went wrong. 

Thus we start off last night and head over to Festergut.  I think it took us about four attempts to get it right, not counting the time one of our other druids decided they wanted to pre-faerie fire the boss before we started the pull (that didn't end well for them).  The only real problems we had for some reason, were people missing spores, and some of the ranged running into melee, thus causing there to not be enough ranged targets for the vomit, and he'd target the melee, instantly killing half the raid.

We then headed over to Rotface, prepared to wipe on him for the remainder of the night. I think it took us about 3-4 attempts though, and we had him down.  The first couple times, people just couldn't kite the ooze, or they would be the first to get an ooze right after an explosion, would run to the OT, get cleansed, but then run back into melee, not realizing they were getting beat on by an ooze.  This would cause us to have many oozes out then, since multiple people would do it, then we'd have a big ooze in the middle and it was over.

That said, the attempt that we did get him down, was an extremely clean kill.  People dodged what they needed to, kiters were on target, and everything seemed to click with everyone.  The first 70% was definately the easier (and seemed quicker) part of the fight.  Once we got to the 30% 'all hell breaks loose' point, we popped Heroism, and I think only got the boss down to 20 or 18% during that time.  The rest of the time, people just decided to actually put on their game faces, and did exactly what they were supposed to do, when they needed to do it.  All in all was a very fun fight.

We did put in 3 of our 10 attempts on Putricide, however, the two tanks that were trying to be the Abomination (one gave it two attempts, the other a single attempt), did a really bad job of it.  Slime pools were out of control, and no ooze were getting slowed.  They said that the UI seemed bugged, and they didn't have any of the actual controls available to them.  Also for some reason they were under the impression that the drink slime ability was channeled, and instead of realizing it wasn't right away, just stood there while nothing happened.

Our plan is to break into two 10 man groups on Saturday, and get to Putricide, so we can use some attempts on the 10 man version learning the fight, and then give it another go on Sunday.

Here is to hoping we have the same raid turn out that we have been having.  Getting to raid with a full guild group once again is awesome, and it's amazing how much a difference it makes when we don't have to pug a single person.  It seems when we do, people decide to play 'Blame the PuG' and slack off themselves.

Festergut [25] down

Took us about two hours, since our shaman decided to go all emo and not raid, but after a couple 1-2% enrages, we got Festergut downed on 25 man.

Now to work on Rotface.  This seems to be an easier fight for DPS and healers, and is more just a technical movement fight.  So far I'm liking it, but the little oozes not being tauntable so far seems shitty.  Mainly because if one goes after a healer, then we have to try and either drag the healer to the big ooze to join them, or the big ooze gets kited through the raid and just messes everyone up.

Tonight our second 10 man group will attempt ICC.  I suspect we should get Festergut down pretty quickly, since everyone has now seen the fight, so there isn't a learning curve to it.  With luck we will get Rotface down as well.

In the 'Pie on Face' category, however, I did all of our attempts on Festerget, in my moonkin gear.  Was missing about 100 MP5 and 300 spell power.  Um, Oops.

Aversion to Progression

So, this is something that I have observed lately, and find it baffling.

People who like to call themselves the hard core raider, don't actually like to do progression fights.  Oh, they love seeing new content, they just don't want to have to work with a steady group of people on learning said fights.  They would much rather the encounter be nice and smooth, without a learning curve, and get angry if any mistakes are made.

Myself, I love the challenge.  Our first two Heartbreaker (25) kills, were post enrage, with me healing wildly, popping all my CDs to keep people alive for that last 100k damage to tick and get the kill.  Those kills were damn exciting, and a lot of fun.  Our third kill was finally pre-enrage, with 24 people left alive at the end of it.  The fight was no where near as fun, since it was no where near as challenging once everyone knew what to do and where to go. 

Now we are progressing into ICC25.  Our first raid night, we ended up having to sit a couple of people, simply because we had such a turn out.  Everyone wanted to see the new content.  We downed Marrowgar after a few of the new people got used to the mechanics, then moved on to Lady Deathwhisper.  This was as far as they made it last week during my move. We wiped a few times as people were again getting used to the mechanics of the fight, and learning to CC the MC'd target's not kill them (I took to cycloning them, as it kept them out of the mix, and prevented people from killing them).

Next we move onto the Gunship Loot Machine, and one shot that, although a bit sloppily.  The sloppiness was to be expected, since a number of people hadn't even seen the encounter yet.  We move to Saurfang, but only have about 30 minutes left in raid at this point.  We get three attempts in and try to change things up a bit with what we learn from each attempt.  There was a little progression in the attempts here, but ultimately we ended up with Saurfang still up. 

That was Wednesday.  Yesterday, we log in at raid time, and there are 17 people online, we end up having to pug 8 people, and even have to do free roll for loot.  Worse yet, there is no way we are taking 8 PuGs to ICC25, as it would simply be an exercise in futility.  Thus, we find ourselves in 25ToC, and proceed to one shot all the encounters, in a truely boring and Farm like matter.

The point of all that is I find it interesting that people who pride themselves on being raiders, will come to the nights that easy fights are going to occur, and suddenly have shit to do on the real progression nights.  These are the same people who will constantly guild jump.  As soon as a brick wall is hit, an actual challenge for the guild, they will jump to another guild that has the encounter on farm.  I can see the logic in jumping guilds if your current one is full of slackers that can't get their shit together.  I don't see the point in missing out on the guild first kills, just so you can have an easier time in getting your purple pixels.

What about you?  Do you find the joy of the game in getting the gear upgrades? Or in the challenge of the raid, and the thrill of the close kills?

As a side note, I finally got Vezax hard mode done on 10 man, and got my Rusted Proto-drake on Ditto.  Now to get the drake on Becoming, and the Algalon key for Ditto.