Classic Raider

We found a couple of ways to wipe in AQ40 last night. There is a limit to how much trash you can pull, even with 30-something 70s. And the Twins still took 2 tries, which tells you something about how viciously tuned that fight would be for lvl 60s. I wonder about the tuning because a few of the mobs hit really hard -- the caster Twin, for example, was hitting our caster tank for 5-6k. Did anybody even have 5-6k hp at level 60? Similarly, the tentacles in C'thun's stomach were hitting for something like that as well.

I was puzzling over this as we were running last night because in the old strats I was reading on the fights, I saw things like "one healer can easily keep up the caster tank" on the Twins. This morning, I'm wondering if some of the bosses are scripted to do dmg as a percentage of the health of the player they are hitting. That's an interesting mechanic that would scale difficulty with level. It would also mean that our high-hp caster tanks are putting a more pressure on the healers than the tanks might, curiously (and it felt like we needed 3 to keep up the caster tanks). If that isn't the mechanic, it's hard to imagine how lvl60s dealth with the 5-6k hits from the tentacles inside C'thun's stomach.

C'thun was a pretty cool fight. We had a little initial issue that I think is pretty typical where somebody gets too close, aggros C'thun and the green beam exponentially blows up the raid -- I think Leorucc got hit for >11 million hp. I didn't think we'd actually get him on the first real try. I wasn't surprised we lost a couple of people figuring out how to spread out, then a few more of us not recognizing the red beam right away.

The stomach mechanic was a little tricky, mostly because of the amount of damage being done in there. But once he was vulnerable to dmg for 45s, we were able to do just about 50% of his hp. Just under, it turned out, so we had to go another whole cycle for the last 2%, but the small handful of people still standing were able to finish it.

On a dps note, Barantir out-dpsed me for the raid cumulatively again. You do have to consider the possibility of curious class balance when the former-healer and former-tank are outdpsing the "pro dps" who've been optimizing their class play for years. I think Bar was doing what I did last raid and charging in with the tanks each battle. I was doing less of that, alt-tabbing out to read up on the bosses, etc. And on C'thun, I took one look at the melee packed in around his sides and decided to go stand in a corner to avoid green beam insanity. I thought I could kill the tentacle spawns or something else useful, but I didn't see many and was afraid of bunching up anywhere anyway. When the red beam started, I realized I could run in and dps, but I was expecting it to look like Netherspite's really visible red beam, not the barely visible reddish flare that it was. Although I was able to recognize what it was when I died. Fortunately, the non-idiots were able to finish off the fight.

A lot of people msg me every night to ask when we get back to the Outland instances. The answer is "as soon as possible" which could mean tonight. Vashj first, I think. Unless we want to do Doomwalker or something quick.