Malygos

One of the problems with Malygos is that it's really a 1 tank fight. Which is annoying since the 10-person groups typically build around 2 tanks (and don't get me started on the fact that we then have to fold the 2x 10-person groups into a 25 person group that rarely even needs 3 tanks). Blizzard does a lot of really smart things in design of instances and encounters, but counting tanks is not apparently one of them.

So when Mrs Beros needed to use the computer for a bit for work last night, I txted Kyoka & Wiseman that I'd be late and figured they'd just pick up a dps and let Dethno tank it. I don't like missing the possible first kill, but Dethno missed a bunch of Herioc Naxx first kills by graciously sitting out, so I figured it was his turn.

But when I got on around midnight, they were still waiting for me. Apparently they decided I should respec ret and come dps. So I did, but I was pretty disappointed with my ret dps. I don't have much ret gear really anymore. The lvl80 tanking gear has more str than my lvl70 ret gear, but it doesn't have haste or crit. So I was just lame.

Total dps wasn't really the problem, though. Managing aggro was a bit of a problem. Also, moving around to pick up the sparks was tough. Since we didn't have a DK to grip them to a specific spot, we had to do a lot of running around and that meant keeping the healers in sync and in range of the tank. Actually, I'm still a little unclear on why we ran around quite so much. If the sparks come to Malygos, can't we stay in the middle and just rotate the dragon around? I was too distracted by dealing with adjusting to dps and remembering to cast Hand of Salvation to do much strategerizing, though.

But we got the first couple of phases under control generally. We started hitting lag and connection issues, though. I was getting a lot of bad lag and freeze-ups through the whole evening.

Then we had to learn the dragon riding phase and that took a couple more practice pulls. I wouldn't say we really nailed it even by the end, but we started to get gradually more reliable on the shield and healing. And scraped out a bare win 20s into the enrage with just Barantir still alive. Still, anytime you get loot, it's a win. :)

It was late, but we then went and did Sartharian anyway. We didn't leave any drakes up, though, we wanted it to be quick.

Tonight is the Heroic reset, so we'll go back to Naxx. Assuming it continues to get quicker, we should have some time tomorrow for something else afterwards. The question is what should our next Herioc progression target be: Sarth +1 or Malygos. It seems like Sarth +1 is actually easier (based on others' progression), but neither 10-person group has pulled it off yet and we've both beaten Malygos now (if only barely, for the Bear group). Maybe we'll flip one of those fancy Dalaran coins to decide.