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Last night's raid was final confirmation of something the rest of my guild have known for quite a while: I am good only at dealing silly amounts of damage, and should not be trusted with any greater responsibility. To the other 9 people who turned up and kicked a huge amount of bottom last night, I offer my most sincere and heartfelt apologies for the incident I'm about to describe. It is a pleasure to raid with every one of you, even when your Vent plays up and your voice sounds like a tricorder. ;)
After unexpectedly getting the Shutout achievement on Flame Leviathan (as a consequence of losing a demolisher early and having a melee dps on the other), we managed to clear through the terrible, horrible, awful trash and get to Ignis the Furnace Master. This was our first time on the boss, and honestly, I wasn't too hopeful. The first two attempts were what one might call 'learning experiences'; wiping at the same point (around 70% health on the boss) when we had two adds up and couldn't get them down. We got past this stage pretty quickly though with a quick changearound of tank roles, and suddenly had Ignis down to 20%.
The wipe
At this point, the rot set in. Our healers were going OOM and any unnecessary healing would probably wipe us. Of course, the game deemed this the perfect time to put our warlock, who was dealing with brittle constructs, into the Slag Pot. When he went in, there was a brittle construct requiring a nuke, and with a couple of dps already down, he shouted out on Vent for someone to go deal with it. Without even thinking, I headed over to attempt to get some combo points on the thing and Envenom. Of course, our imba mage Fugir was way ahead of me, and as his frostly bolt of doom hit and shattered the add, I knew exactly what was about to happen. Add explodes, rogue down to 10%, flame jets, death. Boss hp at 5%, remainder of the raid gets him down to 70k (15 seconds in rogue time ;)) and wipes.
Of course, this was an isolated incident, and I'm sure I (and others) made plenty of mistakes during the encounter which contributed to the wipe. In spite of this though, and the fact that I feel a lot more confident about the guild's chances of progressing through Ulduar after last night, it's hard not to feel guilty about it.
(Specific) lesson learnt
The last 15-20% of a boss's hp is very different from the rest. Hunters can Kill Shot, rogues don't need to worry about the fact that Hunger for Blood is going to run out in 40 seconds, casters don't have to worry about mana, etc. Hence, it's sometimes a good idea to abandon normal strategy and put as many nukes on the boss as you can for the last few thousand HP. I applied this thinking to Flame Leviathan, burning all my pyrite when we'd lost two vehicles and he was at 15%, thinking it better to put lots of damage on him, even though it guaranteed a death if he chased me due to lack of speed boost availability. Unfortunately, I didn't have the same way of thinking for Ignis, and this combined with a mental lapse about the explosion led to my (and the raid's) death.
(General) lesson learnt
Ulduar is hard. And it's great fun. And you, even as the 5th best dpser in your group, need to up your game. I don't mean you need to do more dps with your existing gear necessarily, although that's good. I mean you need to look at all of your abilities again, any changes they got in patches 3.0.8 and 3.1, and their applicability to encounters. For example, I discovered on the second attempt at Ignis that Feint, a skill I haven't used since TBC, cuts the damage from Flame Jets by 50%. In a fight which places so much emphasis on healing, this proved to be pretty crucial.
This also shows a major reason why I like 10-man content so much; in a 25-man, it's unlikely that the reduced damage from feinting just before Flame Jets would be as noticeable, due to extra role redundancy and having more healers to react. In 10-man, there's no opportunity for any member of the raid to slack off or make more than a few mistakes. The fact that everyone has to be on top of their game to succeed, though, leads to a much greater sense of accomplishment at the end.
The guild is currently toe-dipping in Naxx 25, and I fully support that as often as we can make it happen, but for me, experiences like last night's Ulduar (and Malygos one-shot!) will keep me coming back for 10-mans as often as I can. Great work, everyone!
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