My First WotLK Raid

For the last few weeks I've been playing very few hours each day, logging in late and managing at most one instance run, usually with a PuG, or leveling my alts a bit more (Solidstate hit 71 and Solidstar is almost 65). Because I logged in late each day I missed the chance to raid with my guild.

Last night however I managed to login before raid start time and as it happened they were missing a healer, so I got in. I should mention, my guild is small and does only 10 man raids currently.

First we went to Sartharion which was the first time for the guild there. Because this was the first time we first downed all 3 drakes before taking him on. I found it pretty hard (and confusing) to heal and watch the incoming lava wave, I got hit by it many times but managed to heal myself (or got healed by others) untill almost the end of the fight when a combination of adds + wave + low mana killed me. Better gear and more experience and I should be much better at that dance...

Speaking of dances, once Sarth was down (1-shotted in spite of it being a new encounter and several people dying during fight), we decided to go to Naxxramas and continue clearing it, as previous guild raids have gotten up to Heigan and wiped on him. This time we wiped the first time but the practice must have done people good because the next time we got him. Once I understood the tactic I managed to stay alive quite a long time but died to to a little lag causing me to get him by a wave in the nature phase.

Next up was Loatheb and this was truely an interesting fight for healers as the 3 second healing windows meant I had to be on my toes and really use every tool I had to keep the people up. Pre-casting Renew and Prayer of Mending just before and of course spamming CoH during the window itself. We wiped the first try since one of the other healers didn't understand the fight and kept trying to heal during the 17 seconds no-healing period, but the second try we got the boss.

Gothik was next up and he proved to be a pushover, going down on the first attempt. The fight itself was fun, we split up - 4 people for the living side and 6 for the undead side. I was on the undead side and all the people took a lot of damage - there was a lot of continous AoE damage going around. However this meant that Prayer of Mending could really be used to full effect and together with CoH and of course together with the other healer (a paladin) we had no problem keeping the people us. DPS was also sufficiently high and once Gothik himself joined us he only had a chance to stack his debuff 5 times and teleport twice before we downed him.

Alas no loot for me but the fun of being once in a raid was reward enough :)