It Feels Like the First Time...

Yeah, the very first time...

On Saturday night, I got invited into a half PuG 25 man ICC. My first time into a 25 man.

I turned off all my unnecessary Add-ons (Carbonite, Gearscore and a few others) just to minimize any DC/connection issues. I don't know the GS of any of the other players, but I heard I was among the lowest there. Buuut, I was told that as long as I could maintain 5-6k DPS, it isn't a problem

So, I managed to die once on trash before marrowgar (still not really sure what happened) but other than that it went pretty well.

Me & a friend were doing about 6,200 DPS and were sitting about 8 or 9th on the meters. I was pretty happy with that, at least until that time I died. I re-buffed (food, potion, etc) but forgot to hit my Seal.

Ugh... DPS going DOWN!

v
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I ended up in 19th spot on the meters before I realized it. DOH!

So, we mangled Marrowgar, shouted down Deathwhisper, and pillaged the Gunship fights. One shotted them all. I'm not sure how many died here & there, but it wasn't really difficult, and the deaths were few.

The guild that was runnning it was Knights of Disorder (Velen) and they did a very VERY good job of handling a bunch of PuGs, being fair, and running the raid well.

My friend was also whisping me additional info, since I had never made it past Marrow before this. What's funny, was I had asked Kattastrophe what to do (she's been all the way to Rotgut or Festerface, or whomever) and her reply? "No clue, I just heal them."

Harumph! lol

So, we got all the way to Saurfang.

By this time, I had crawled all the way back up to 11th or 12th on the meters again. Actually, I should qualify that, I was moving up in total damage done. My actual DPS, while pretty nice (to me) at 6k or so, was near the bottom. Yet, I was at least contributing my part to the fight.

And Saufang... kicked our butts 4 or 5 times. I didn't die, but we couldn't kill him before the enrage timer went off, and we just ran back to the boat and let it reset. The closest we cam was getting him down to 3%, and then watching his health climb back up to 7%, 11%, 14% and then 15%. Grrr.

Runaway!

Using the strategy we did (melee attacked Saurfang with ZERO AoE, while all ranged killed the Adds) I don't think we had enough geared melees. Myself included. (again though, even though my DPS here was only 4,500, I was still climbing the total damage meters - then again ALL melee DPS folks had dropped because of that)

Without re-stacking the melee DPS people, the only thing we *might* have been able to do was to let melee take 2-3 AoE attacks, after each group of Adds. (like maybe cast Consecerate and one Divine Storm) and then go back to strictly single target.

The only problem, as I'm sure any of you will know: one single solitary screwup, that aggro's an Add, would almost certainly wipe us. I'm not sure we (melee DPS) could have pulled it off, but it may be worth a try.

Now, I have an invite to complete the run (or try some more) but it starts tonight at 6pm server time. (which, cooincidentally, is my normal time - Pacific time) I will still be at work when it starts.

Thanks to Xarlexis's idea (my friend that was helping me out) I now have an "AoE free" rotation on my action bar 2 (the one you scroll to see) It made avoiding the AoE a LOT easier. Thanks Xar!

I do have to admit, just poking 3 different spells (Judgement, Crusader Strike and Exorcism) for the majority of an 8 minute fight was pretty boring.

tap

yawn

tap
tap

yawn
yawn

tap...

Though it got a *little * bit more interesting when he got down to 20%, since that activated Hammer of Wrath, so I got FOUR, count em FOUR spells to use.

lol

Regardless, it was fun to do, even if the Saurfang fight didn't go well. But it's clear I need to gear up a bit, even if I wasn't anywhere near the lowest damage dealer...


OH! A couple other things I wanted to ask...

as I mentioned in a reply to my last post (an April Fool's post, btw) it occurred to me that I might be causing problems by using pictures & videos in my posts. (for example, in my unemployed April Fool's post, I included a picture of Google's "Topeka" page, as a hint about the nature of my post) Now, since many folks use a reader, and can't see the images, the value of the images is sorta lost.

So, to you my sundry readers, should I coninue putting in images? I know my posts can get a tad long, and wall's-o-text can get tough to read, and they sometimes help out.

Should I keep them?

Also, as the folks on SAN forums have mentioned; dark backgrounds with light text can be difficult to read. (white on black in particular) does the color of the text & background bother you guys? (though again, anyone using a reader won't know or care :P )

Toodles.