This is good news for me in my eventual attempts to get dps gear for my Shadow offspec. Although I realize that because its better than something else, that doesn't necessarily make it good. Wowhead commenters that are good at math go on to state that the Deathfrost Boots are actually 2nd Best in Slot for Discipline. Shut up. And I can make these on my tailor? Right now? Brb. (BiS honors given to these bad boys. A hotly contested item for casters and healers of all armor classes.)
Anyway. The point I'm working up to is that my priest (despite actually healing a large amount of ICC by now) is now actually more than prepared for ICC. So I'm perfectly willing to bring either Aioka or Mara to our weekly run. But not both. Which I told Mord earlier in the week. I can heal or I can dps... Actually on Aioka I can reasonably do both. I'm sort of dreading the day when Aioka does better dps than Mara.
So, Wednesday, I was expecting an evening full of warlocky goodness that ... never manifested. We've recognized that the three-healer combo is definitely a good plan for everywhere beyond the Lower Spite and the Plagueworks. Mord set up the raid with not only himself as healer, my bubble-flinging dorf, but also Ann's Holy priest Ash. Priestly Twin Powers Activate!
The only really interesting consequence of this being that the lootmaster was a healer.
Most of the Lower Spite is old hat by now. Militia came in as a tank again, but on his death knight this time. Things were so ridiculously smooth that both Ann and I went Shadow for the Saurfang fight. I don't have recount set up on Aioka, so I have no idea what her dps was. A respectable 5.5k according to Ann (who has her own blog-home now over at Noob Raid - getting saved to others' fail runs since 2010).
In the heady rush of facing new progression last week (Blood Queen who?) we decided that this week we would tackle the Lower Spire and the Frostwing Halls. Hellooooo Sindragosa. Therefore, we thumbed our noses at the Plagueworks and the Crimson Halls and went right over to the Frostwing Halls. Dreamwalker went surprisingly well. Last week Mord solo-healed the dragon, this week he solo-healed the raid. What a show-off. :p
No, he was nice enough to let two priestlets who have never seen the inside of Nightmare Portal give upping Dreamwalker a shot. I'm happy to say that we did not let him or the rest of the raid down. Binding Heal and Greater Heal got dusted off and put to good use. Penance was kept on cooldown. The only thing I think I particularly failed at was... picking up those stupid green balls in the Nightmare Portal. That's not terribly important, right? Ugh. I'm afraid I'm a bit retarded in full 3D environments. I tend to have trouble in the Occulus too.
The trash runs between Dreamwalker and Sindragosa was totally thrilling in that 'I've never been here before and why are things climbing down the walls at us?' sort of way. The gauntlet was terribly messy for a group that's never been there. Even with Militia very carefully herding us along. It was somewhere in the middle of this that I finally realized I still had my dps trinkets equipped. (1 & 2) Probably when I found out I couldn't tap my Sliver for mana. Oi.
Walking out onto Sindragosa's platform was an awe-inspiring moment. The literal ton of frost whelps gave me the heebie-jeebies. And when you finish wiping them all out, Sindragosa flies in looking every part the avenging dragon who you should probably not poke in the eye or kill her babies. The entirety of vent was treated to a rather unflattering yelp on my part. But hell, that dragon startled me.
But when we had rebuffed and finished laughing at the noob (i.e. me) and I put my proper
Not to put a damper on the excitement we felt, but it ended rather horribly. It started well enough. We learned to juggle air and ground phases easily enough. I managed my own Instability debuff decently well and if anyone else sucked at it I didn't notice.
Final Phase, however. Oi.
The first two attempts I was the first one to Ice-blocked. The first time I wasn't fast enough getting to the pre-determined 'Ice Block Area' and tombed a whole bunch of people. Whoops. Second time was much better. But then the second tomb is scheduled to come down and we haven't finished beating up the first one yet and the melee hasn't cleared their stacks of whatever and we die. And this goes on for 3 or 4 attempts before we call on account of sleeping.
I think if we manage to get to a point of extending raid lockouts again, Sindragosa needs to be the first (and likely only) fight of the night. Then we might actually have a chance at throwing ourselves at her enough times to start improving.
Militia, however, assures us that we're miles ahead of his other guild in terms of how far we made it in our first several attempts. Apparently getting to the final phase on Sindragosa is significant win.
I don't doubt that we'll continue to get better, I'm just hoping that we have enough time before everyone is done with Wrath for awhile. I know Cata is looming on the horizon, but I'm spending my time with my fingers in my ears going "Can't hear you!".
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