When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Leo Down!


What a roller-coaster night of raiding. We had 4 tries on Hydross, failing on a tank disconnect, 2 threshold crossings, and one time where there was a threshold crossing, 8 adds, and the raid took off to reset the event. Meanwhile, the Guild Leader and Main Tank, Daigan, was still fighting as Hydross was at about 10%.

"Guys, did I call for a reset?"

Crap.

On the fifth try, we get our act together and burn him down in about 5 minutes, which was our best time ever.

A fairly uneventful clear to Leo, at least until we get to his cave. We start wiping. Repeatedly. I had 10 deaths for the night-- 6 on Hydross (soul stoned 3 times) and 4 on the trash on the way to Leo. I think the consensus was just sloppy execution all around, particularly on crowd control. We finally clear the trash and are staring at Leo. At this point it's almost 12 on the East Coast and we all know this will be our last attempt for the night.

"Flask up."

Really? For one try? Well, it's an Ildari flask, so might as well-- the guild gave it to me, I use it at the guild's command. And then, everything clicked. DPS was spot on, healing was spot on, and all of the tanks were doing their best to keep Leo off the raid. 9 minutes and 37 seconds later, we had our first kill. 2 pally glove tokens dropped, and were won by our rogue and shaman. The Fang dropped as well, and our Warlock tank blew his DKP load to win the blade. Sadly, I was not even that interested-- I am about 1000 honor away from the season 1 mace, and maybe 2 weeks away from the S2, which is clearly an upgrade.

I am very proud of our guild. We had an atrocious night leading up to it, and we have only had 3 non-consecutive nights of working on him. That we were able to kill him after such a poor night is really a testament to the amount of talent present. Now if we can just focus a little more, we can increase our quality. We are a casual raiding guild. We raid 3 nights a week. We do not min/max our signups, it tends to be first come, first serve. So we're never really sure what we're going to have coming in. But we got the job done.

Looking at my personal performance, I noticed a few things. First, I felt on a few occasions that I was not able to keep up with the DPS, threat wise. Unfortunately, I am still using the continuum blade. I have been debating whether or not to get the S1 gavel, and then the S2 gavel a week later. I think that might be a huge waste of honor, when I could just get the trinket, but our DPS has really amped up their performance. The third option might be to just pass on another few raids until I can get the S2. I could then buy the Battlemaster's Audacity to bump my threat and give me a mini-last stand effect.

Another issue, looking at the WWS parse for the Leo kill, is the impact that Seal of Vengeance had on the fight. Despite the dot missing 10% of the time, and the Judgement missing a whopping 26%, these two abilities still accounted for significantly more damage than consecrate. Boosting spell hit here would help dramatically. The heroic badge rewards are loaded with spell hit, and I wasn't wearing most of them, instead opting for 4 piece T4. I think this actually boosts the priority for the new belt, versus the legs.

Finally, I have been slacking overall on my heroics. I have been attempting to spend more time in AV, farming honor for the S1 mace, and turning down heroic invites. Now as close as I am to S2, I might have better spent my time getting badges to improve my overall gear level.

The takeaway for a broader audience on this is probably just to focus on getting that S2 weapon and just plug away, week after week, until you can get it. That gradual process will allow you to maintain a sizable threat lead on your DPS while clearing your mind and allowing you to focus on whatever other areas of weakness you may have.

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