Movin’ On Up

Yes, folks, The Oroborus is movin’ on up. Maybe not to the East Side, but we are definitely progressing.

On Sunday, on our third night of trying, we took down Rage Winterchill in Mount Hyjal. The huge plus to our efforts was we progressed on every attempt. The first night, we barely saw Rage. The second night, we managed to get him to around 80 percent, then 70 percent. On Sunday, our first attempt was about 61 percent, then 37 percent, then DEAD!!

Earlier in the weekend, Osprey did his second consecutive full clear of Karazhan. Picked up an off-hand item, but it’s not as good as the Voodoo Shaker, which is (or was; more on that shortly) taking up space in my bank. The next night was Talonis’ turn in Kara. Another nearly-complete clear: we ran out of time for some folks before we were able to take out Netherspite. Unfortunately, Attumen refused to part with his bow (although he was more than willing, for the second week in a row, to give it to Osprey!), as did Prince. However, Prince did oblige with The Decapitator, which Tal was more than happy to accept, replacing a Shattered Sun Exalted blade.

Earlier on Saturday, Talonis ran a Heroic Underbog and snagged a new ring, which temporarily hit-capped him. W00t! However, in equipping The Decapitator, a bit of +hit was lost. Still, he can reach hit cap in raids with buff food, and at this point the attack power and crits are equally important, if not more so. Of course, a Shadow Laboratory run resulting in "you-know-what" wouldn’t hurt, either!

So Monday comes, and we’re still high on our first T-6 boss kill of the previous evening. Eight o’clock rolls around…and we have 24 people online. Two of those are in Gruul’s Lair.

*blink* WHAT? And about that time the RL asks in Guild chat (somewhat, but not completely rhetorically) why people are in another guild’s raid when it’s time for invites to begin. To cut to the chase, we shortly see a couple /gquits, which was fine, since these two had never been seen in one of our guild raids anyway. (Even more ironic was the guild they were with was the one that merged with us, ever so briefly, the week before. That lasted a bare 72 hours when the newcomers realized they weren’t being given full control of the guild.)

So, no raid on Monday. (Distressingly, we had over 30 people online by 9:00 p.m., but I’m not going to dwell on this bit of drama.)

Last night, Tuesday, we had plenty of people on at the appointed hour. The target was Hydross the Unstable, first boss in SSC. As an added incentive to get our collective act together, each member of the raid was promised 10 DKP if we could clear trash in 7 minutes or less. So we did. (Well, we should have: We’ve been running SSC for 3 or 4 weeks now, and our days of wiping on the first pull are well behind us.)

On the first attempt, we had Hydross down to 61 percent—not bad at all for us. On the second attempt, DPS didn’t stop during a transition at Mark 4, so the "poison tank" wasn’t able to pull aggro; again, we were at about 60 percent. Attempt number 3: Let’s call it ugly and leave it at that. Confusion/lack of direction on battle rezzes was only part of the problems in that pull.

Then came our fourth attempt. The main tank (frost resist gear) went down on the second transition, but the battle rez was timely, as was my huge crit with a greater heal. Then the second tank was down, but the druids were right on top of the second battle rez. Our off-tanks, tasked with reining in the adds, got behind on aggro. Timely healing and smart DPSing saved us there. Suddenly we had Hydross at 10 percent, and another transition…

Raid Leader on Vent: "Okay, we’re close…MARK 4! Poison Tank get aggro, ALL DPS STOP…damn…we’re gonna wipe…NO WE AREN’T! I refuse  to wipe this close. DPS, POUR IT ON! EVERYONE, DPS like hell… 5 percent…3…NICE JOB!" BOOYAH! Not only that, but my close friend Katika went home with a lovely parting gift, for only 50 DKP!

Oh, and Lurker? You’re on notice, fishface!