Raiding and Pillaging

{Warning: this is an incredibly long post that may not make sense if you don't know at least something about WoW}

My guild for WoW is a mostly casual guild. There are those who go out and pug every instance and every raid. There are others who will never instance at all. I fall somewhere in the middle. I have done the occasional pug (Pick Up Group, for my non-playing friends) but they are not my favorite. Group dynamics tend to be a bit off when it comes to pugs. So I instance regularly with the guild and occasionally pug something.

But the last two days have been all about raiding. On Wednesday the plan was to hit Vault of Archavon (VoA) or Obsidium Sanctum. It just depended on whether Alliance or Horde controlled Wintergrasp. Well, when raid time came Wintergrasp was Horde controlled so we headed over to OS. Now this is a 10 man raid (which I have pugged before) but we as a guild were well overpowered. It took us 35 minutes to get through with only an occasional death and no wipes. Sartharian (the last dragon) is an interesting fight but once you know to look for the flaming wall of death you pretty much avoid it. So there was 10 man OS done. In a shorter time than it takes to do a Violet Hold 5 man instance. So we all headed back to Dalaran. I was about to set out to do my dailies when Alliance took Wintergrasp. We jumped at the chance to do VoA. Now I've never done this raid. But considering it took us 15 minutes I can safely say that we were not in any real trouble. Four trash pulls and then the boss. We should start farming that one. And we had a good time. I enjoy instancing but I really love 10 man raids. It's just so much fun to work together and hang out.

But all of this was just whetting my appetite for last nights event. The guild was going back to Naxxramas! I mentioned in January that we had made an attempt on Naxx but had been stopped by low DPS. At that time we only were able to get through the first two bosses in the arachnid quarter before Maexxnia put an end to our fun. This time was a little different. We were all geared in blues and purples. We were all doing over 1500 dps. And for the first time we were trying Ventrilo. (more on that later) Anub'Rekhan, who had killed us a couple of times previously, went down without too much of a fight. Clearly our new strategy worked. The Grand Widow was just as simple since we managed to wait for the enrage to bring down her minions. I had won my sword from her in January. Maexxnia brought us down once because we forgot about her enrage but the very next time we brought our revenge. She finally went down. And that cleared the Arachnid Quarter. Yay!

On to the Plague Quarter. We had tried in January but the trash mobs killed us. You know it's bad when you die repeatedly on trash mobs. Last night that was not the issue. We rolled through the trash mobs without problem. I got to spend most of my time AOEing. And after only a couple of pulls we were face to face with Noth the Plaguebringer. Now I was originally going to say that the Grand Widow is the easiest fight we've seen in Naxx but Noth comes close. He is pretty much a tank and spank except that he summons skeletons. Then mid-fight he disappears and we have to fight a larger number of skeletons. Then he returns. He went down without any deaths. Easy fight. Heigen the Unclean was not the same way.

I don't think I have ever seen a fight with so much need for movement. Our Main Tank, my friend Lon, described it as two dances. First there is the slow dance, where the ranged stands on the stage while the melee and tanks hurt Heigen on the floor. Every couple of seconds the floor erupts with acid. You need to make sure you're not standing on that section when it does. You move left to right across the floor avoiding the acid areas. And then back. When Heigen returns to his original spot the ranged must come off the stage and the fast dance begins. You just have to move. No casting, no healing, nothing. Just move. Then when you are again in the middle, the slow dance portion starts again. Until you bring him down. The first attempt was a wipe. We just couldn't stay ahead of the acid. Our long suffering rogue started the deaths but I quickly followed. The second attempt worked but only after we had lost all of our main dps. In the end, two healers, two tanks, and a dps/tank brought him down. It was the longest fight I've ever seen. 12 full minutes of fighting. Of course it was particularly long since I spent most of it "decorating the floor" as our hunter said.

The last boss in the Plague Quarter is Loetheb. Loetheb is a strategic fight but not an impossible one. He casts debuffs on you. The first one drains your health, the second one reduces healing by 100%. So basically you are watching your health drop rapidly and can't do anything about it. You have a three second window to heal. The healers did an amazing job keeping the tanks up even with such a short window. I concentrated on healing myself when those three seconds were available. I didn't want the healers to have to worry about me. I ran through my healthstone, two potions (with the cooldown I could only use two), and more bandages than I care to count. I died but the rest of the guild brought him down. Plague Quarter cleared. Yay! We cleared two quarters in a little more than 3 and a half hours. It was amazing. We go back on Sunday and I'm incredibly excited.

As I mentioned earlier we were also using Ventrilo. Vent is a voice over internet program that allowed us to talk to each other in game. I have to say that having played with my guildmates for over a year now, it was really cool to get a chance to hear their voices. My guildmates have definately become friends but friends that I only could type to. Last night I got to talk with them. I hadn't originally planned to hop online until right before the run but when I heard one of our guildies talking through Vent I had to jump on early. I skipped dinner (a huge thing for me) to be able to hang out and talk. Although raiding and instancing with the guild is always fun, being able to talk just made it that much better. I never really thought I would enjoy raiding. I worried that there would be too much pressure. But I'm having nothing but fun. I'm so excited for Sunday. Yay!!