Last night I went for a scheduled 10-man raid. Actually we were supposed to have 2 teams running but we were short on both an off-spec tank and a healer, so in the end the officers decided to put one strong 10-man team up and have the other deferred to another evening when hopefully there would be all the mains needed.
Obviously not something all the people who got left out were happy about, but thanks to having 2 main-tanks and 3 main-healers my group managed to get all the way to Sindragosa, including clearing Blood Queen as I said (that we cleared Putricide is a given of course :)).
The evening started off as usual, first wing was never hard for us in 10-man and after the recent nerfs it is practically a joke. Second wing however was another story...
On entering the second wing we encountered the quest giver for the new weekly ICC raid quests who tasked us with getting infected from both Rotface and Festergut. As this requires not wiping on the second boss after downing the first, we decided to down Rotface first under the assumption that we were more likely to wipe on Rotface. As it turns out, we were right. We wiped on Rotface. Twice!
I have no idea why that happened to be honest. Sometimes even gear won't make up for lack of attention/focus. Also our third healer was trying to remove the debuff all alone with the result that he nearly didn't heal at all. 2-man healing this fight is no joke especially as both other healers were priests (a druid+priest combo would probably have had more luck). Regardless, we switched to having the paladin tank decurse with me helping and this time we managed fine, although a couple of people did die so didn't get the debuff.
Festergut was thankfully 1-shotted and as we had read previously, it was enough for one person in the raid to return the quest for all to get it completed. One lucky sob even got a 264 BoE ring in his bag, not me alas :)
In spite of this weak start (2 wipes on Rotface...) we managed to 1-shot Putrcide 10 and 2-shot Blood Council. Coming up to Blood Queen we were not so sure we would manage as the fight is intensive for both DPS and healers and privately I had some reservations about our healing setup, yes we were 3 main healers but none of us was usually in the top 2 of healing meters and I was sure the lack of HoTs from a druid would be felt. Indeed, we wiped 2 times and both were due to people dying, usually in the spiky damage period right after the fear from the air-phase. However on the 3rd try people were more careful after the air phase, healers were more ready or perhaps we simply got lucky, since in spite of losing one DPS mid-fight, we managed to get the Blood Queen down.
My tip as a holy priest is to use Fear Ward on yourself just before the boss takes to the air in order to continue to heal people up in preparation for the shadow bolts nukes. On the second air phase I used my Human racial to break free of the fear, so again I could top people up. Otherwise at least in 10man it is a fairly easy fight to heal, mostly using AoE heals together with PoM and liberal use of Renew. The fight is very mana intensive, prepare to use all 3 of pot, pet and Hymn.
Anyway after the Blood Queen we went for Valithria Dreamwalker, for me this was a first time in the fight but the other healers had already beaten this encounter in 25man so after a wipe due to me getting healer agro and dying we managed to beat the adds and heal her up to full. Interesting fight as we had 2 healers go into the portals all the time, one a paladin and the other an off-spec elemental shaman using a healing spec but DPS gear. In spite of the DPS gear he managed an incredibly impressive 13k HPS since he had almost full stacks from the portals all the time.
I liked the round room fight just before Sindragosa, with the waves of spiders coming down from the walls around you. There was some joking on Vent about being afraid of spiders :) But it was mostly a time for the DPS to enjoy some pretty wild AoE.
I guess due to the late hour and feeling hyped about getting to Syndragosa with 18 attempts left, we entered her room and cleared the trash, followed by killing the 2 big dragons flying around. Turns out, killing them started the fight so we lost an attempt. Then a DI'd paladin rezzed me and I stayed on the floor too long and pulled her again, costing another attempt... :(
So we called it a night but overall it was a very successful night and I think really good practice for all involved as none of us (I think) had been at Blood Queen with the previous 10man group which downed her last week. I think we are now better ready for the 25man version :)
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