Rocking the Military Quarter

There were two 10 man Malygos runs scheduled last Friday. The group makeup and class balance for the approved raiders was a bit shaky since a successful Malygos kill requires fine tuning of the raid. Last minute retractions made the outlook for that run look grim. The Raid Leader for the other run proposed that we go back into 25 man Naxx and give the Military Quarter a try (the last quarter before we would gain access to Frostwyrm Lair). The combined groups formed a nice backbone for a Heroic Raid group. We would just have to pick up 5 more people. Excellent, let's give it a try!

Forming the 25 man raid last minute caught a few people by surprise, however most of the Malygos raiders were happier to go back into Naxx anyway. There were a few no-shows from the Malygos raid list which further confirmed that this wasn't the night to kill Malygos. We did a call in Guild Chat to fill in the empty raid slots. We managed to get a decent 24 man group (with potentially one or two incoming to fill in spots later).

Welcome to another episode of Good Idea, Bad Idea. Subject - Priest Tanking

The raid started a few minutes late and we immediately made our way to Razuvious. The only challenge that we anticipated was coordination of the Priests Mind Controlling the Understudies. There are many issues with this fight, and all the weight is solely put on the Priests' shoulders.

• All three Priests in the raid were healing
• Healing Priests have almost no hit gear (resulting in misses and early breaking of MC)
• Learning to tank takes time. Priests have the opposite role, and a complete change of mindset is difficult

We assigned two of the priests to Mind Control Duty and let the third continue to heal (and assigned some hybrid classes to off-healing). Some strategies indicate that a Mind Control pull + taunt Razuvious is acceptable, other strategies suggest that a tank head in first in case the adds go after the Priest who just Mind Controlled. The first method was not working which resulted in a few people getting killed right away by the time the Understudies could get control of Razuvious, however the encounter appeared to be easy enough to heal and DPS when Razuvious was being held away from the raid. We tried the other method of pulling which worked nicely for immediate control. The Priests were shaky in calling out when the Bone Shield and Taunt was going to expire, but they improved significantly every time.

The last challenge to iron out was that sometimes both Priests would have their Mind Control Broken at the same time (or near the same time) and Razuvious would kill a few raid members before he was once again taunted. We decided to get the third Priest to control on Understudy and taunt when the other two Mind Controls broke at the same time. The amount of concentration and control that the Priests projected in their voices over ventrilo was phenomenal. After some shaky starts, they managed to get into a great pattern of communication and we then killed Razuvious. This was a close kill, all possible resources were exhausted during the fight; less than 10 people survived the encounter which made for a photo finish. It was an exciting and well deserved victory, and the Priests overcame a great challenge and performed an impressive feat.

Division of Doom

We took a short break and filled up the raid to kill Gothik. I divided the groups for the encounter, however I was probably too focused on the "right" class/role division (for an ideal group) and not on common sense divisions based on survivability, burst/slow DPS and Ranged/Melee. This resulted in an odd combination on the Live side which lacked some burst healing and was light on DPS compared to the Dead Side. I'm always hesitant to put too much DPS on the Live side because they can overwhelm the Dead side if they kill too many enemies at once. However, with two Ret Paladins and a Paladin tank on the Dead side, I had some misplaced paranoia. The poor group balance resulted in the Live Side getting overwhelmed. My mistake. I rearranged the groups for the second attempt and we killed Gothik easily. Woot.

Precision Encounter

Even though it was getting a little late, we decided to press on to the Four Horsemen. Many people loathe this fight however this is my favourite encounter to date; simply put: it's beautiful. It embodies all the aspects of a challenging, yet satisfying encounter. All the pieces of the puzzle are needed for success - Sharp Movement, Talented Healers, Solid Tanking, Communication and a degree of Uncertainty. There are many interesting ways to complete this fight, but I assigned groups based on the standard strategy: Tanks and DPS in the front (split evenly) and a couple of people who can heal themselves/each other in each back corner. The first time wasn't bad, the front was solid, the back just got a tiny bit behind on healing. The more successful back corner had a healer and a bear tank. It was suggested to me that the other bear tank who was cat for this run slap on his Stamina set and take the other corner. So the back had one healer and one bear on each side. This worked well on the second attempt! During the second attempt, the front killed Baron and Kor'Thazz very quickly, however there were a few deaths every transition. The biggest difference between the 10 man and 25 man versions it that the marks hurt a lot on the 25 man. Slowly the raid withered away to less than 10 people who were almost all healers and tanks, but we were successful! Toward the end of this encounter, almost everyone was in a mad panic as the melee DPS switched out when stacks got too high and the healers adjusted their range to stay out of the marks. This fight was a huge adrenaline rush and I wish I can do it again!

In conclusion, a potentially gloomy run was converted into a fun run that advanced guild progression and sharpened the skills, knowledge and gear of many players. Some of these battles were probably won by the force of will of the participants, and this proved that we can overcome some of the game's biggest challenges.

Motivation

We had decided to call the raid after the Four Horsemen as it was a bit past the designated raid stop time. This was a long and grueling run and the raid made a great effort and advanced our progression ahead. Another victory for the Thugs!

We didn't have time to see Frostwyrm Lair, so we posted a run for tonight to try to kill Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad before the instance reset. Hopefully the participants don't underestimate the difficulty of these encounters, and make the proper preparations for this raid. We have suggested three pieces of Frost Resistance for this fight to increase raid survivability. Hopefully we can pull off a guild first full clear of 25 man Naxxramas tonight.