WTB Fire-Resist Warlock!

I am full of grumble this morning. But I’m not alone: So are the other 24 people who were eager to blow away Leotheras the Blind last night. However, our guild has only one warlock with fire-resist gear, and at raid time last night, he was downloading and installing patches due to a corrupted WoW installation. 

We start invites generally at 8pm server time. At 7:30, the first cries went up in guild chat: "Are we gonna kick Leo’s a$$ tonight, or WHAT?" "Let’s go poke his eyes out!" "He’ll never see it coming!"

At 7:53, I got my invite; first one in the raid after the raid leader. In short order we were full, except for the 25th spot—our ‘lock. I was the first one to SSC; as soon as a second person joined me there, I started summoning. For a change, almost everyone was ready when they got the summon. We were PUMPED!

We headed in and started clearing the trash before Leo. I think we may have been a bit cocky, maybe had a bit too much adrenaline flowing. Misdirects were sloppy, people forgot where to stand so they didn’t get hit by AOE damage, people died when they shouldn’t have. We may even have wiped once; I don’t recall for certain.

At any rate, we got to Leo. The RL went over the fight for the nth time; strategy was discussed, reminders were given. And we were still waiting for our warlock.¹ Finally, when people were starting to get antsy, we decided to hike over and take a look at Lady Vashj.

The RL explained the fight, acknowledging the entire time we were about to wipe in glorious fashion, but at least we’d get to see the fight. Many people were excited about the prospect of fighting her; I wasn’t. For one thing, the strat the RL was reading says very plainly, "If you lose one person (in phase 1), the raid will wipe." Well, we’d lost a second lock² so we were 23-strong. Which for Vashj, before we even began, was somewhat weak.

Just about 30 seconds before we were going to start rebuffing for Vashj, our fire-resist ‘lock returned. A quick vote via Ready Check showed the majority still wanted to down Leo, so back we went. We brought in another holy paladin to replace our second warlock, and after a very brief recap during buffing, we started.

We were doing well, but DPS was behind. It seemed there was still some confusion how how much DPS to deliver during form changes and whirlwind. Once again, we got Leo down to 25 percent when the enrage timer expired. I even managed to defeat my Inner Demon for the first time!³

So we went again. Unfortunately, we had no battle rezzes left, and when the ‘lock went down, we couldn’t get him back up. That was a rather quick and dirty wipe. DPS were still having trouble so the transitions were explained in a bit more detail.

Attempt number 3 for the night, and we were sssmokin’! Leo was at 50 percent, and we still had over 6 minutes on the enrage timer. Thirty-four percent, and over 4 minutes left…DPS was solid, healing was solid. The ‘lock was soul-stoned and still hadn’t used it…we could all feel that THIS was the time…

…

…And trash respawned. The wipe, and the raid, were called. And 25 people were totally and thoroughly bummed.