Dedication

Wednesday night we wrapped up the Dedicated Few, but it took the whole night to do it. We had a little trouble getting rolling with Patchwerk -- not having a pally healer to use Beacon and double big heal seemed to make a big difference. I suspect it changed the healing demands on all the other healers, but they adjusted and we got it. Grobbulus and Gluth were still easy with 20. But Thaddius was quite challenging.

As an indication that it's challenging, you get a separate achievement for beating Thaddius with 20. And over the first few pulls it was clear why. Not only are we down 5 players for dps purposes, we only have 20 players to stack for the polarity buffs. As we quickly learned, that means any early switching deaths are really painful and dropped our dps down to where we couldn't beat the enrage timer. Likewise, missing the jump down to fight Thaddius costs a lot of precious time.

So winning the fight requires a lot of perfection from all 20 people in the raid. And it took us awhile to achieve that. Although it was occasionally frustrating, as we got incrementally better with each try, I got a real sense that there was realy training value in working through this encounter. Naxx has been very easy, so it's been a long while since we've been under the kind of pressure where every single person in the raid has to perform and perform at a high level for the duration of the encounter. The encounters are generally forgiving, so if you screw up a transition or a move and you die, you can just shrug it off. But not on Thaddius with 20.

As we died a few times, I was a little worried about frustration and tempers, but jokes and Rizion playing random music over vent broke up the tension. I was also a little worried about frustration directed at 1-2 people who were more likely to die early. There's a balance there of calling people out to inspire them, but not breaking down somebody's confidence to do their job. But at the same time, I'd look at recap and see even the top dpsers inching their way up by pure numbers of dps done. I saw people starting to elixir up and bring out the special use potions. And all of that made me happy. I think we were remembering how to do a finely tuned fight again and that's going to serve us well in Ulduar.

In fact, unlike pretty much any other special achievement in Naxx, I'd be tempted to do that one again at some point for the people who missed it just to treat it as a training exercise. But I'd probably get a lot of groaning on vent if I propose it next week. :)

We're going to need a 3rd raight night this week to get the dragons. I meant to post something for Sunday, but I didn't make it online last night (typical Thursday). I should be able to get that set up tonight. I hope we get decent turnout. Sundays aren't always the best turnout day anyway and everybody seems distracted. I guess we could try Sarth & Malygos with 20 in a pinch (Sarth = easy with 20, Malygos = not).