Wind Blowing

Yesterday we didn’t have enough people for 25 man Ulduar. Oh summer time…

So we set up an elite kill team and headed into 10 man after Yogg.

Wang was brought as the 3rd healer, and we did great in there.

The Leviathan was done the easy and fast way, so we could move up ahead quickly. I did get Three Car Garage and Unbroken though – and the sweet hit trinket I was after.

Heartbreaker was next. First time for the guild. We got the heart down with a lot of time to spare, and the adds and void zones are just so easy to deal with. I did have some mana problems in the end (wtb more mp5 already?), but it went pretty ok.

Kologarn is just a joke on 10 man, and we got Disarmed with no trouble at all. Auriaya was a bit rough… we lost 2 dps very early to the feral defender, but 2 battle rezzes took care of that. Another kill.

Keepers time!

We were really close on the Hard Mode timer for Hodir – if we wiped and restarted we might have gotten it. But our goal was to get to Yogg, so we just went ahead.

Freya is another fight that is a lot easier on 10 man (at least the easy mode) and she was no threat to us. Clean kill.

Thorim’s arena has been our nemesis on 25 man lately, but it is a lot more gentle on us on 10 man. I gotta say though, healing in there still makes me a bit nervous. That damn hammer debuff is just a pain. And the adds always love to go kiss a clothie bye-bye. We were so focused in there, that it was a bit of a surprise when the gauntlet team jumped down on us and Siffed popped on our screens. We brought Thorim to 30%, but couldn’t close the deal this time. Mana was a big issue for me there… again! We went in again, but the Hard Mode timer beat us by 2 or 3 secs – again, we decided to just go ahead and kill him. But I know we can do that one.

Mimiron was no challenge. We haven’t gotten him before on 10 man, but after doing it on 25 man, the positioning and rhythm of that fight is just the same. So we just went through and got our Keepers of Ulduar achievement. I did fall to healer tunnel vision and got blown up by a rocket, but I ankhed immediately and it was like it never happened /wink.

It was almost time to wrap up the raid and get to bed, but General Vezzax was right after a bit of trash. We took a vote and decided to keep going. It was the first time a raid got extended since I joined Unemployed. They take the scheduled raid times very seriously in respect to everyone’s real lives.

But we went overtime, and worked through the trash to get to the big ugly General. The fight is exactly like in 25 man and the main issues are dealing with your mana pool and interrupting him.

We tried with me healing the first attempt, but decided we might be better off if I went enhancement and worked mainly on the interrupts. Melisende and Doom (our DKs) would fight for them with me, but my cooldown of 6 secs is much better suited to handle that, because then we don’t need to work out an interrupt rotation.

However, there are some issues with that at the moment…

First, Earth Shock is part of my dps rotation. I usually use it everytime it’s up and it adds up to about 10 to 12% of my overall damage. On interrupt duty, I just keep it off my rotation, waiting for the right time to use it. That means my dps drops quite a bit. But that’s ok, no interrupts equals dead raid.

Second, even making sure ES is always up for the interrupt, it’s still affected by the infamous global cooldown. So, if I’m working on my normal rotation, minus ES, I’m still triggering the GCD very often and Searing Flame can come up right as I got everything unavailable. It’s still a 2 second cast, but if you count the GCD, reaction time and lag – yeah, I can miss my queue…

Most times, since I do have the two DKs with me, one of them ends up getting the interrupt when I miss – but if I were by myself, I’m pretty sure it would go through eventually. It did happen on one attempt and it was a wipe, so I try to avoid this problem as much as I can.

What I can do is replace ES with Wind Shock – then it’s another dump in my damage, since I gotta drop ES completely from my arsenal…

Anyway, my dps takes a dive on that fight (no ES and 20% less attack speed from Vezzax’s aura). And my interrupting is still not 100% reliable due to eventual lag and reaction time.

But things will change in 3.2. This comes from the latest patch notes:

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock.

 Ok, so my interrupt and my dmg spell are no longer the same spell and are on different cds. My problem is solved. I can keep ES on my dmg rotation and use Wind Shear for the interrupt. Cool I guess. I can only see one downside on this change and that is on fights like against the Iron Council, as my usual rotation when on the little guy ends up interrupting most of his chain lightnings or swirls. But we can deal with that, no big problem.

I imagine my wind spell will remain off the GCD… I don’t ever go into the PTR so haven’t tested it yet. But they shouldn’t change that. Therefore, interrupt duty will be a breeze… well, maybe more windy than a breeze.

So, it was a great night! I got a couple of tier pieces for my resto set (which is always great) and now Yogg is just waiting for us. I need to go study that fight a bit, because he will not survive tonight!

~ by Wangari on July 15, 2009.