This Week in Raiding: Healing Omnotron Defense System

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general. This week we have the Omnotron Defense Council encounter from the perspective of the Holy Paladin, although much of this article will be useful to all healing classes.  This is not a strategy guide, but everything that you need to know to heal this encounter successfully.  If you would like a more detailed description of the fight and overall strategy, please check out Tankspot's write up and video.

The Omnotron Defense System is a group of four Golems that make up what is typically considered the second boss encounter in Blackwing Descent.  It is a Council style fight; the bosses share a health pool and have a lot of abilities, making this a complex and chaotic fight.  Environmental awareness from the raiders and clear communication from the raid leader are keys to downing this fight reliably.

My raiding team uses the following raid composition for this fight:  Two tanks, three healers and 5 DPS.  A typical raid composition for 25 man would be Two tanks, six healers and seventeen DPS.

IN THIS CORNER, THE BOSSES

Magmatron is the fire boss.  He has two abilities that are going to make a healers life difficult: Incineration Security Measure and Flamethrower.  

• Incineration Security Measure is a raid-wide area-of-effect flame ability.  It has a very obvious flame graphic that is impossible to miss.  You can't avoid this damage, even thought the graphic makes it look like you can, so don't try.
• Flamethrower is a single target ability that shoots a jet of flame, does a lot of damage and is preceded by Acquiring Target, which projects a very large and obvious red laser beam at it's target for four seconds.  The raid needs to run away from the path of the laser beam, and the person targeted needs to stand still so that they don't spread the damage to other people.  The healers should start precasting heals or use mitigation cooldowns on the target in order to ensure survival.  As a Paladin, if you Divine Shield yourself while the laser is targeting you it will cancel the effect entirely, and Magmatron will not cast his flamethrower.  Hand of Protection has no effect on this ability.

Toxitron is the poison boss.  His bag of tricks consists of Poison Cloud and Poison Protocol.

• Poison Cloud. Toxitron will periodically spew poison clouds at a random target that gives whoever stands in them a 50% increased damage debuff.  This includes the boss, so it's likely that your tank will try to stand the boss in the cloud, so be ready to heal through the extra damage if your tank isn't positioned perfectly.
• Poison Protocol is the ability that caused my raid group the most difficulty.  The boss will release 3 poison slimes that will randomly target a player and move towards them.  If they reach their target, they explode and create a large poison puddle.  Getting hit by a slime is instant death.  They are untauntable and need to be burned down by the DPS as quickly as possible.  Avoid them at all costs (See below).

Electron is the lightning boss.  He does Electrical Discharge and Lightning Conductor.

• Electrical Discharge is a fairly straight-forward chain lightning ability.  Spread out a minimum of 8 yards and be mindful of other people moving close to you.  It is not hugely damaging unless it's being spread to a lot of people.
• Lightning Conductor is placed on a random raid member and will do electrical damage to that person and anyone around it.  If it is placed on you, run out of the raid.  As well, be aware of other people around you who have it and stay away from them, especially if it happens to be on the tank.

Arcanotron is the magic boss and he is responsible for Power Generator and Arcane Annihilator. 

• Arcane Annihilator is a large damage, single target ability that will be the responsibility of your tanks and melee damage dealers to interrupt.  As a healer, be aware of sudden health dips when Arcanotron is up.
• Power Generator is a hugely important mechanic for all casters, including the healers.  Arcanotron will put a puddle underneath his feet which will increase his damage significantly.  It's the tanks job to move him out of this.  The ranged DPS and the healers should stand in it for a damage boost and mana regeneration (See below).

Shields:  Two bosses will be active at any given time (except the very beginning), one active and one protected by a shield.  It's vitally important not to attack the boss with the shield active.  Each shield has a powerful effect that will go off if it is damaged, so target switching is extremely important.  Even a stray Judgement can cause a ridiculous amount of damage to the raid.

The only exception is Toxitron's Poison Soaked Shell, which will put a stacking damage-over-time debuff on anyone who attacks it, but also gives a large burst damage increase.  This debuff can be Cleansed, but many raiders will pick up a couple of stacks intentionally for the extra damage.  Ask beforehand if your raid leader wants it cleansed, but in my experience, just leave it if the person who has it is in no danger of dying.  Watch their health closely though, in case they get a bit overzealous in grabbing stacks.


JUDGING

As always, Judge as often as you can for the mana regeneration.

If you are using your Focus Target to determine your Judgement targets, it's important to put it on the right person in this fight.  It is not optimal to Focus/Judge on a tank on this fight because 50% of the time the tank is going to be targeting a boss with his Shield up.  It's better to Focus on a Ranged DPS who is reliable at switching targets, and it's even better to focus on the Raid Leader who is calling out the switches, if possible.

Judging the wrong target on this fight could potentially cause a lot of damage to your raid.  Be careful of your targets!


MANA MANAGEMENT

(or Using Power Generator for Fun and Profit!)

Arcanotron will create a blue puddle on the ground which will give him or whoever is standing in it a damage buff.  Your tank will move him out of this puddle.  You need to stand in this puddle as much as you can, as it regenerates mana while you stand in it.   

Power Generator also grants a damage buff as well, so your caster DPS is going to want to jump in the puddle with you, which most of the time is fine.  It gets problematic when Arcanotron and Electron are up at the same time, however, the chain lightning will cause an insane amount of damage if half the raid is stacked up, costing more mana to heal than will be gained from the puddle.

It's best to keep the DPS out of the Power Generator in this case, and let the healers regenerate their mana.  The damage caused by Electrical Discharge chaining to the 2 or 3 healers (5 or 6 in 25man) is very easy to heal through.  Talk to your raid leader about this if it becomes a problem.


DIVINE PLEA

There is no excellent and obvious period of low damage in this fight to regenerate mana using Divine Plea, so I recommend using Guardian of the Ancient Kings to offset the 50% healing reduction.  Since GAK has a 5 minute cooldown, you can only do this combination once during the fight.  If you are having major mana problems, use Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor in combination with Divine Plea throughout the fight.

If I am on the ball and using the Power Generator wisely, I find that I only need to use Divine Plea once during this fight, so GAK is a perfect offsetting cooldown.  Use your discretion based on your own mana needs.

If you have any Spirit trinkets - like Core of Ripeness - use those on cooldown.

LIGHT OF DAWN OR WORD OF GLORY?

In the 10-man version of this fight, your raid is going to be spread out a lot making it difficult to hit the 5 (or 6, glyphed) people needed to really make Light of Dawn worth it, so Word of Glory is a stronger choice most of the time.  With the increased amount of people in a 25 person raid, Light of Dawn would be the go-to Holy Power heal much of the time.  Just be mindful of how many people you will hit with your LoD before you cast it; if it looks like you won't hit 5 people (pets count too, remember), then go with WoG.

When everyone stacks in the Power Generator, Light of Dawn will be much easier to use effectively in 10-man.

WHERE THE HECK IS EVERYONE?

For a healer, range awareness is key to this fight, as everyone will be moving around a lot and can easily get out of range at a crucial time, causing a death. Stay in the middle of the room as much as you can, and be prepared to move to either side as the situation warrants. Keep an eye on your tanks and make sure that you keep them in range.


USING BEACON OF LIGHT

One of the tanks will get the Beacon of Light. There will be only one boss when the encounter begins, so put your Beacon on that tank.

If you are finding that one of the tanks is out of range a lot, put the Beacon on him instead. Beacon of Light has a 60 yard range, far greater than any of a Paladin's heals. This way you can ensure that if a tank is out of range he is still going to be receiving some healing while you reposition yourself to get within range again.

Unless your raid has incredibly high DPS, this fight will last longer than the five-minute duration of your Beacon, so be prepared to reapply it as needed.


HELP! THE SLIMES WANT TO EAT ME!

Probably the single most frequent cause of wipes on this encounter will be Poison Protocol.  It sounds simple in theory:  Avoid the Slimes.  It's a bit harder in practice, however.

• First thing to do is position yourself as far away from Toxitron as you can while he's active.  Space can get a little tight when both Toxitron and Electron are up, but I'd rather let an Electrical Discharge chain once or twice than be too close to the Slimes when they spawn.
• Set up your Raid Frames to show Aggro.  I have a big, menacing looking red box around my frames to indicate aggro that is hard to miss.  Hopefully your Raid Leader will call out the Slime targets as well.  Either way, once you realize you are targeted by a Slime, start running away from it.  The Slime will only explode if it hits it's target, so it's absolutely vital that it doesn't get to you.  Healing does not matter as much at this point.
• Run around the outside of the room to give your DPS the most time to burn down the Slimes.
• Use the Speed of Light speed bonus from Holy Radiance to put some distance between you and your Slime.  This will also spread some heals around the room as you run.
• Do not let it get too close to you.  It has a much larger range than it would seem.

AURAS AND COOLDOWNS

Try to have Resistance Aura up so that can use Aura Mastery during Magmatron's Incineration Security Measure AOE. If you can time it correctly, you can have double resistance for the entire time this ability is active, substantially reducing damage.

Devotion Aura is much less useful for a Holy Paladin in this fight, as the incoming physical damage is very light. Let another Paladin or a Shaman put that buff on the raid.

Save using your first cooldown until the second boss activates. Aside from Magmatron, the damage caused by a single boss is very minor - Toxitron especially. Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath should be used as often as you can, unless you are saving them to offset Divine Plea (see above). I prefer to save them and hit them just after a boss switch. Magmatron is the big AOE damage dealer in this fight, so if you are assigned to healing the raid, save your cooldowns for when he's active.

Hand of Sacrifice is best used on the target of Flamethrower, or on a tank that is taking extra damage from standing in a Poison Cloud.

Save Divine Shield for Flamethrower. If you are targeted by Acquiring Target, hit your bubble and the flamethrower will not go off at all. If Divine Shield is on cooldown, use Divine Protection to help mitigate some of the damage.

Guardian of the Ancient Kings should be saved to offset the Divine Plea debuff (see above).


THE PAYOFF

Omnotron Defense Council drop two items that are good for Holy Paladins: Security Measure Alpha and Life Force Chargers. Both are worth getting.


* Big thanks Ophelie and Leetsauced for answering a few questions on Omnotron 25, and Rades for helping me get the Wowhead hoverlinks working.  Thanks, everyone!

Light at the End of the Tunnel

When Cataclysm launched I set a goal for myself to complete the raid content while it was current.  I came very late to the raiding scene in Wrath of the Lich King, and missed a lot of really great content.  I did not have the chance to clear Naxxramas or Ulduar while they were relevant, and still haven't made it back there to run them for nostalgia reasons.  I didn't want that to happen to me in Cataclysm.

We're getting there.  The last couple of weeks have seen very good progress.

Shadowgarde is now 8/12 in current tier content, having downed Ascendant Council for the first time last week. We had a couple of good looks at Cho'gall last week as well, even though they ended with some embarrassingly quick wipes.  Only Nefarian & Cho'gall remain in their respective instances; then it's on to Throne of the Four Winds, which we haven't looked at yet.

It's nice to be able to see that the realization of my goal is in sight.  There is still a long way to go, and three of the four encounters that we have remaining are the most challenging of the expansion, so, like the Dwarfling, they're not likely to go down quietly.  But the end is within reach, and that feels pretty good.

For my part, despite the changes to my life, I have managed to attend my raids and keep my focus well enough, although I have hardly been at the top of my game.  Lack of really restful sleep and a hell of a lot of distractions (most due to the relatives that have been visiting us non-stop; welcome to Hotel Fannon) have made things harder on me.  I'm still managing to get the job done, but I don't feel like I've been playing with the same level of skill that I was before.

For example, last night on Magmaw and Omnotron (which are admittedly farm bosses for us now) my use of cooldowns was very spotty.  Ooops.  Nothing earth-shattering or anything and no healing-related wipes, but hardly efficient and I expect better of myself.  I did much better once I realized that I was playing lazy and the pulls of Maloriak and Halfus were much better.

Tonight we'll be tackling Atramedes, Chimaeron and Ascendant Council, and hopefully we'll have enough time to get some more attempts on Cho'gall.  Time is going to be very tight, however.

As I mentioned previously, our Raid Group has a hard time cap; we're done at 10pm server time, pretty much no matter what.  We have managed to squeeze a lot into those 5 hours per week, but we're beginning to run out of time to work on the progression bosses because we're spending all of our time downing the 8 bosses just to get there.

It's a hard choice:  Extend the lockout to work on progression or continue to reset so that we can get the gear.  As of right now, the gear wins out, since a majority of our raiders still need a significant amount of upgrades.  I have yet to see a single piece of Plate Healing gear drop yet, for example, and I know that there are others who have been RNG's bitch as well.  The Resto Shaman that we don't have has been making out like a bandit, however.  Maybe that's another reason that I decided to level one.

Luckily, there is lots of time.  With Blizzard's decision to delay the next tier of raids until patch 4.2, we have at least a couple of months before we move on to another raid.

But the goal for this tier is progressing nicely:  75% of the way home, and still going strong.

This Week in Raiding: Progression Road Kill

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.

PROGRESSION ROAD KILL

In the past several weeks, Shadowgarde has been doing very well when it comes to progression, especially given some of the restrictions that are inherent to a casual raiding guild.  Even with a lack of healers and a raid composition that is never the same twice, we have managed to down bosses consistently and haven't regressed on any of the encounters that we have downed previously.

This week was our first look at three new encounters that completely kicked our ass.  And I don't mean 20% wipes or Oh-My-God-We-Almost-Had-Him-If-Only-That-Guy-Hadn't-Had-His-Head-Up-His-Ass type of wipes.  No, we're talking the 20-Seconds-Into-The-Fight-Holy-Fuck-What-Just-Happened wipe.

GOOD NEWS FIRST

There was some good news this week.  Our Sunday/Monday raid group went into BWD and took down the three bosses that we've killed so far with little trouble.  Magmaw was one-shot perfectly, Omnitron was taken down quickly with only a couple of wipes, and Maloriak was defeated for the second time after about an hour or so of working on it.  After a couple of attempts on Halfus we wrapped up our first raid night with very high spirits, as it was significant progress given that we hadn't managed to get all three bosses down in one night previously.

HALFUS

The trouble started with Halfus and the lovely drake combination that was up last week:  Nether, Storm and Slate.  Everything that I have read on this fight says that this is the worst possible threesome, and it's a hellish way to get your first look at this encounter.  What with the stacking healing debuff, the increased attack speed and Shadow Nova knocking everyone back and interrupting everything, most of our attempts didn't get very far before people started dying.  We tried it twice this past week, with two different raid groups and didn't really get very far.  At least people have now seen the fight and have an idea what to expect.  I'm hoping that with this little bit of experience and a slightly easier drake combination that we'll make some headway this week.  

I am honestly a little astonished that this boss is considered an "entry level" raid boss on par with Magmaw.  He hits freaking hard.

CHIMAERON

Walking in to this encounter on Monday evening was a bit of a shock, honestly.  I figured that we'd keep working on Halfus, so I was quite unprepared for this fight.  And as a healer, this fight is a complete and utter shock the first time you try it.  

If you haven't seen this fight before, it has a really interesting and unique mechanic.  The raid gets an buff that prevents them from being one-shot as long as they are about 10,000 health.  This is very good, since the boss will periodically hit the raid for 280,000 damage.  As long as everyone is above this level the raid is fine and it's the healer's job to get them back to 10k but no further, which puts a unique twist on healing.  Small, fast heals and mana efficiency seem to be whats needed here, and any heal that goes out while someone is over 10k health is utterly wasted.  It really made me take a long, hard look at my healing spell choices.

At the same time the Tanks are going to be taking a huge amount of damage and need to be topped off.  They have the same buff preventing them from being one shot as long as they're over 10k health, but often they will be struck with a double attack that can kill them if their health is too low.

And of course the buff will periodically disappear and everyone needs to rock their biggest AOE heals to keep up with the damage.  This fight seems to be designed to really test the healers mana management skills.

Our attempts on this boss ended badly.  We had two Holy Paladins and a Holy Priest, which didn't seem to be a very good combination for this fight.  My heals seemed to be coming in too slow to help keep the raid up, and the tanks seemed to need everything we could throw at them to keep alive.  By the end we had one Paladin on the tanks, the Priest on the raid and I was bouncing in between them, which seemed to work better.  It looks that we need a lot of work on this fight yet.

BE VEWY VEWY QUIET, WE'RE WIPING ON ATRAMEDES

After about an hour of solid futility with Chimaeron, we decided to take a look at Atramedes.  The trash packs of Dark Iron Dwarf Spirits in his room caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly the group on the left.  Chain Lightning is nasty, and make a mental note that these guys don't reset and have no leash.  During one rather unique wipe we ended up accidentally kiting them back up the elevator to the entrance where they immediately attacked anyone who zoned into the instance.  I was laughing my ass off, even as I did my second corpse run of the pull.

At this point in the night, we had pretty much chaulked this night up to a learning experience anyway, so our attempts on Atramedes only lasted for about half an hour.  We did get a good sense of the fight mechanics, and it looks like he will be the next boss that we tackle.

I love the mechanics that this fight brings to the table.  The sound bar and the gongs are very cool.  And the visual effects of his special abilities are unique and beautiful.  I am looking forward to working on this fight; it looks like a lot of fun.


THE LESSON:  PREPARATION IS KEY

This raid week really showed me the benefits of preparation.  We were prepared and ready to tackle Magmaw, Omnitron and Maloriak and we got them down quickly and efficiently.  We struggled on the bosses that we weren't prepared for, even though the Raid Leaders knew the strategy and communicated it to the raid.  Obvious as it may seem, reading up on the bosses beforehand and watching videos on the fight makes a world of difference.  As well, during progression, Raid Leaders need to communicate which bosses will be tackled next so that the raid can have an adequate chance to prepare themselves.  Surprises in a raid setting will lead to wipes, repair bills and drama.  Do everything you can to minimize them. 

UPDATE 4.Feb.2011

Last night our Tuesday/Thursday raid group went into Bastion of Twilight to continue working on Halfus.  Due to the lack of healers that I've talked about before it took them a long time to get the raid together, and had a couple of alts subbing in the healing spots.  I listened in on Ventrilo and our healer channel and it seemed like they were making some good progress.  With about an hour left in the raid, I was asked to sub in for one of the healer alts.  It caused a little drama with my wife, but I agreed.

The fight went so much better than last week.  I was assigned the tanks and we started making some real progress towards the fight, but were still wiping pretty consistently before the drakes were down.  On our very last attempt, however, we had a really good one going; the tanks were up, my mana was good (I had tunnel vision bad enough that I have NO idea how the other healers were managing) and the drakes went down.  It's amazing how much easier this fight gets once the drakes start falling.

With literally one second left until the enrage timer, Halfus fell.  It felt good.

It’s Nice to Be Needed... But Not Too Needed

When you are in a Raiding Guild, it is nice to be needed. 

I really enjoy my guild.  Even though I am a relative newcomer (I've been there for just shy of a year now), I feel like I have been accepted into their bizarre little family and have become one of them.  I have seen the highs and lows of progression with them; stood defiantly in front of the Lich King as he decimated our raid, exulted with them in triumph when we overcame that fight, and was there to see my guildmate Bomba break down in great, heaving sobs every time someone mentioned the phrase "Ulduar Hard Modes".  

When I joined Shadowgarde I was a complete noob when it came to raiding.  I had actually never even set foot in a raid before, but I knew that I wanted to.  I did everything I could to get my gear up to par (including PUGing Trial of the Crusader, which was equivalent to getting a 10-man and a 25-man root canal every week) and eventually I was invited to heal our guild ICC run.  There were a lot of growing pains as I learned the ropes, and my guildmates were great in helping me through it.  I think that in the end I evolved into a very good raider and that I've earned my raid spot.

It is a little disconcerting, on the other hand, to feel completely indispensable.  

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that any time there is a raid called I get an instant invite.  I love being a go-to healer and someone my guild can count on to always be there.  But if I can't make it for whatever reason (say, like having a pregnant wife have a mental meltdown on a raid night), I don't want to feel like I'm the sole reason that the raid gets canceled.  Frankly, I can't take the guilt.

It's not just me, either.  At this point we are so hard up for healers that we don't have enough experienced, raid-ready healers to allow much flexibility at all.  If one of our regular healers miss a raid, it's a good bet that it will end up being canceled, or at least significantly delayed while we scour tradechat for a PUGer whose knuckles don't drag on the ground.  We have picked up a new recruit who has been raiding with us for a few weeks now who looks like he's going to work out really well, but we need more.

We are a very large guild full of all sorts of people from raiders to PVPers to casuals and socials.  It's not unusual to have 25 people online at raid time and still not have enough people who are interested in or geared for raiding.  Being such an incredibly diverse guild is a double-edged sword; on one hand the interaction and feeling of family is wonderfully comforting and compelling, while at the same time it's very discouraging to feel like you're PUGing within your own guild.

So... Any healers on Sargeras looking for a new guild?

  

This Week In Raiding: Magmaw, Omnotron and Maloriak.

Welcome to the first post of This Week In Raiding; a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.  I am hopeful that this feature will be full of a lot of useful information and general thoughts from my perspective on raiding, with less focus on "Oooo, look who we killed this week" and pretty kill shots.  

That being said, that's totally what the first post is going to be.

This Sunday was the first raid for our new raiding group led by Xzidor and Oath.  Our first target was Blackwing Descent.  Our guild had downed Magmaw last week with a different group, so this was the first time seeing this boss for a few of the raiders, and the first time that this group with these Raid Leaders fought together.

Magmaw went down after a few attempts with very little trouble. Our only real issues were coordination and getting people to move at the right time in the right places.  We again used a one tank strategy that allows the healers to pretty much stand still and focus on their jobs without worrying about the Pillars of Flame.  Next week on TWIR, I'll detail our Magmaw strategy in more detail.

On we went to the Omnotron Defense Council. This was the first time that a lot of us, including myself, had seen this fight, and it showed.  We had a lot of issues trying to get everything under control.  There were lots of mistakes all around, but everyone kept plugging away and we eventually had a couple of very good attempts. We even tried having our Resto Shaman solo the bosses for a while, but decided that probably wasn't going to work out so well.  Things got much better once the Holy Paladin (that would be me) stopped running around the room with Magmatron's giant laser beam on him, wiping half of the raid.  The biggest problem was with the blobs of poisoned poop that Toxitron spawns, which gave most of our raid fits while trying to avoid them.

We reconvened on Monday night, but started an hour late due to the fact that I was running incredibly late getting home from work.  This raid group has a hard time cap and stops the raids at 10pm server time, meaning we only had an hour and a half to get whatever progression we could before the reset on Tuesday morning.  Luckily, they only called me a few nasty names in raid chat before we were off and running.

It's amazing what a difference a day makes.  Knowing we had limited time we quickly called for resets as soon as we ran into a major problem, so we managed to get quite a few attempts in a short amount of time.  A lot of the mechanics that we were having so much difficulty with the day before worked themselves out very quickly.  Target switches were crisp and quick, AOE damage from shields was minimal and Poison Protocol was less of an issue with the slimes going down quickly and people actually managing to avoid them long enough for the DPS to burn them down.  Within an hour of starting we had our kill.  I was very proud of our Raid Group when those pesky golems finally toppled over.

With only about 30 minutes left until our time ran out we moved on to Maloriak.  If you have never done this fight, it's a complex encounter with adds and a spread-out/collapse mechanic that is on a semi-random pattern.  So there is a lot of movement and a lot of buggers adds that want to beat the off-tank into the ground who, of course, can't be tanked anywhere near the boss or else everybody pretty much dies instantly.  I know this because we failed at all of these mechanics at one point or another.  That being said, our final attempt of the night got Maloriak down to 31%, which I am very pleased with, considering our limited time working on him.


SHADOWGARDE NEEDS HEALERS

I'm very glad that my guild waited for me on Monday night, as I would have regretted missing the raid, especially since we got Omnotron down (still no loot-love for my Holy spec yet, though).  However, it should never have happened... I should have been benched and replaced by another healer so as to give the raid more time to have better chance at moving our progression further forward.  The sad truth is that as of right now we have very few raid-ready healers and need to recruit more.

If you are on the Sargeras-US server and are looking for a good, yet casual raiding guild, send me an email at symbology AT rocketmail.com or apply at Shadowgarde.net.

On Magmaw and Pre-Raid Jitters

As I mentioned in my last post, Shadowgarde took on Magmaw in our first official guild raid.  We spent a solid hour and a half working on him over 7 or 8 attempts, but we finally got him down.  It was quite the thrilling finish as well:  Our tank died at 13% to a Mangle so we had to either kill Magmaw while he was chained, or else it would more than likely be a wipe.  Everyone stepped up the DPS, and even the healers started throwing all they had at the boss.  Magmaw died just at the last instant and we had our kill.

We did a single tank strategy on this fight, which put the pressure squarely on the healers to keep the tank alive.  Our healing team was myself, another Paladin and a Holy Priest.  For the most part, we were able to keep the team alive long enough to hit the enrage timer.  The strategy also called for the healers to stack with the Melee, which kept it much simpler and really allowed us to focus on the job of healing, and not dodging Pillars of Flame and those awful Lava Maggots.

I took my own advice and had a guildie craft the Elementium Stormshield for me before the raid began.  It felt very good to be fighting with a shield again, as opposed to a book.  I'm not sure how much of a difference it made, but it certainly gave me a tiny bit more confidence having a shiny purple equipped.

All in all, my pre-raid jitters were completely unfounded.  I think I did just fine. 

LESSONS

After the raid I took a look back at Recount to go through the numbers and analyze how I did and found a few things:

- I learned that you need to save your log quicker if you want to upload it to World of Logs.  Oops.

- Either Recount doesn't handle our Illuminated Healing Mastery properly (which is likely), or our mastery is completely and utterly broken.  According to Recount, in a 9 minute fight I had one single solitary shield that absorbed 2121 damage.  That simply cannot be right.  I wonder if I need to get an upgraded version.

- I gained back a total of 244000 mana.  Mainly from Seal of Insight as you’d expect, but I also got from Divine Plea, Glyph of Divinity, Corrupted Egg Shell and a Mana Potion.  Being able to recognize the slow damage period (which is fairly obvious in this fight) so you can slow your heals, hit Divine Plea and regenerate your mana is very key.  I managed to hit Divine Plea three times in that fight and my Corrupted Egg Shell at least twice.  Due to the healing reduction, I am reluctant to hit Divine Plea as often as I’d like, but I certainly can get better with using the Egg for mana regen.  It's a two minute cooldown, and I could have used it at least twice more.

The Innervate from the Druid and the Divine Hymn helped as well, of course.  Mana was my foremost concern for the entire fight, but I ended up managing it pretty well, I thought.  Blizzard wanted to make it matter, and they certainly have suceeded.

- Right now I do not have Lay on Hands glyphed to reduce the cooldown.  However, if Raid Boss fights are going to last this long, I'm definitely going to change that.  I could have used it twice in that fight, and it would have been extraordinarily useful a second time around.

- When you have a mechanic that requires everyone to bunch up, Holy Radiance is godly.  It ended up being my #2 heal after Beacon of Light.  I only remember popping it 5 or 6 times, but it ended up accounting for 16% of my overall healing.  Also, the Speed of Light boost saved my bacon in this fight three or four times when I was required to get out of the fire. 

- 53 Holy Shocks in a 9 minute fight seems a bit low.  Ideally, you could squeeze in 90, plus whatever Daybreak procs you get.  I need to improve on this.

- 21 Flash Heals and 9 Divine Lights.  I'm actually surprised that I managed to do with that few Divine Lights. 

- Only 16 Judgements.  Wow, it really felt like more.  If I was Judging on cooldown, I could have done 67, returning more than 150000 mana.  That’s a lot of mana left on the table and while you can't expect to perfectly judge every time it's available, I can definitely do better than this.

CONCLUSIONS

It is hard to draw any real conclusions from a single raiding night, but I think that I can say two things:  my healing style is not yet as efficient as I would like it to be, but I am ready to raid.

Bring on the bosses.

Raid Ready (?)

Our guild is preparing to step into our first organized Guild Raid tonight and truthfully, I’m a little nervous about my gear.  I have what I would consider the bare minimum level of gear for raiding and while it’s all enchanted and gemmed, it’s still just the minimum.  I would really like to avoid a situation where I feel like I’m being carried by my guild or the one raider who is holding back the group due to gear.  I don't want to be that guy.

Thosif is completely equipped in Blues of level 333 or higher, an average iLvl of 341 and I think that I have a very good feel on how to use the toolbox that Holy Paladins are given.  As well,  at least in Heroics, mana regeneration is not a large problem any longer.  This was always my benchmark for stepping into a raid, but now that it's imminent, I'm wondering if it's enough.  

On the other hand, according to this survey from WOW Insider, this level of gear in raids in not unusual, so hopefully this is just a little bit of stage-fright or performance anxiety.  

I’m looking forward to seeing the new raids.  I’ve been watching some videos on Magmaw and Halfus Wrymbreaker and they look really quite interesting.  I love the ‘chaining’ mechanic on Magmaw, which looks like a fun fight.

Our guild (which is a very tight-knit group, most of whom have been together since vanilla) has been becoming antsy about get raiding started, and some have been quite vocal about it.  It’s caused a minor amount of drama, but hopefully once we start getting Boss attempts under our belt things will start getting back into a rhythm.  As I’m sure is the case with a lot of Casual Raiding Guilds, the raiding break for the expansion has wreaked havoc with our raiding schedule, and it will be good to get back at it.

STILL LEFT TO DO: 

There is still so much left to do before I am truly happy with where Thosif is, gear-wise.  The holidays are finally over, so I’m hoping that I can get most of this done in short order over the next week.

-  Get Exalted with Therazane.  I have the lesser of the Shoulder Enchants that you get at Honored, but I still have a ways to go before I can get the main one.

-  Replace PVP items with PVE items.  I have 3 PVP items equipped:  Bracers, Gloves and Relic.  The Relic and the Bracers are actually really quite good considering the other available options, but the Ornate Pyrium Gauntlets have got to go.

-  Suck it up and buy the damned Elementium Stormshield already.  It’s best in slot and I have the money, so why not?  There is plenty of gold to be had by questing, the Auction House, doing dailies and going to…

-  Tol Barad.  I need to do the Tol Barad dailies with more consistency.  The Mandala of Stirring Pattens is going to be just too good and too readily available to pass up.  I find it a little difficult to get motivated for questing, however, because I just really hate playing my Retribution off-spec.  I am considering changing my questing spec to Protection – not for tanking, but just for a more engaging play style.  There is something “right” about bashing a mob in the face with your shield.

-  Heroics.  Find a way to add 3 or 4 more hours to the day so I can run more heroics.  This could be a tough one, as the laws of physics will probably prevent it. 

-  Reputation.  I am very close to Exalted with the Earthen Ring, which gives me a nice new set of gloves, but the reputation grind is moving along very slowly.  Time constraints allowing only one heroic a night (successful or not) has seriously limited the reputation gains from Tabards.  It seems like this faction is taking forever.  And then there is Ramkahen yet to do for the Sun King’s Girdle.