Filling in

As we head closer to Christmas people are bound to disappear and Bloodlust Stårk is going to be gone for three weeks.  We as a group have very little, well, no success missing one of our tanks or healers.  If Honorshammer, Boston, Blackhaus or Stårk are missing we have mostly been screwed.  On new or difficult content that is.  The only time I can think of that would be an exception was when Grimadin filled in for Honorshammer, when toc was fairly new (still easy stuff though).

So we entered ICC not knowing what the night would hold.  The previous week we had to three heal the first boss.  This night our roster was Boston (dk tank), Honorshammer (pally tank) Blueshield and Danath (dps warriors) Ofn (rogue) Pinkshift (feral druid) Donkatonk (mage) Neo (lock) Blackhaus (holy priest) and me.  Honors and Pink despite having healing spells weren't going to be any help as far that went so it was on Black and I.  The last time Black tried to heal something together it was heroic toc and we were both out of mana the only time we downed the the first of the three beasts.  We were also down Boston that time and my gear has improved since then but that still scared me.

The encounter had been nerfed since the week before so down bloodlust and a healer we went for it.  We didn't have tank assignments we just healed them both.  I kept every hot I had on both tanks (as much I could) and healed anything else taking damage.  I managed to die as I was about to go oom and was battled rezzed then I rezzed someone who was dead.  I popped a mana potion and soon the boss died.

We moved to the second boss who can be tough considering group make up, according to forum QQ this can't be done with a dk and paladin tank.  We have done this twice without wiping with those tanks.  The fight seemed more difficult with only 2 caster dps, but it was fairly easy.

The gunship went a lot smoother this time around.  It wasn't glitched at the end either.  The most difficult part of this fight is when people are jet-packing back from the enemy ship.  They take a ton of damage from an angry dwarf.  Knowing this from being killed our first week on this fight I made sure to be ready to heal them.  It seemed to make a difference as no one died.  Once you get that transition down there it's a pretty easy fight.

Now this Saurfang guy at the end was going to be trouble.  This a fight where having ranged is pretty important.  The boss summons two adds that buff the boss each time they hit someone.  So you are supposed to kite them and blow them up.  We obviously couldn't do this, we had to heal through it.  The fight went faily smoothly until he was at about 10% we had a couple of people explode.  I normally don't battle rez unless asked to, in case the raid leader wants to save it.  This time I decided to rez Ofn and hope that would be enough.  He summoned two more adds the dps was told to ignore them.  One of them wanted to eat me.  I used nature's grasp and he sat in roots while we finished the boss.

To my suprise (and everyone else's I'm sure) we cleared it with no wipes.  It only took about an hour and a half, which keeps Tuesdays open for me to keep raiding this.  Our normal raid nights are now bad for me, but as long as it only takes that long I'll be fine.  Hopefully my raiding schedule will be better by the time the next wing opens.

For me it was really nice to know I'm capable of filling the roll of healer (other than the third healer) and we can keep moving.  Most of this expansion my healing gear has collected dust, it's nice to get to use it.  This also has me rethinking the whole rolling a pure, my ability to fill in for Stårk, kept everyone's mains in the raid and keeps the gear progression going without a hitch.  Unless we are talking about my gearing of course, eight kills and I haven't had anything I would want to roll on drop yet.  Come guys, five leather melee dps drops, zero leather caster drops of any kind, that's not nice.  That's all.