Karazhan

Last Friday night, I was working on leveling Daxie and got the call to raid Kara with Death's Advocate. They must not have had enough guildies to start earlier in the week, because we had a fresh instance.

So, we took down Attunman, cleared out the repair guy, and headed to Moroes. Now DA had not gotten him down that I know of. All of the other times I've been in there with them, it's been a wipe fest, with some redeeming qualities. So I was expecting to get some rep with the Violet Eye, learn the fight better, and incur some repair bills.

We did end up wiping a couple of times, BUT....we. finally. took. him. DOWN!!! There was MUCH rejoicing!! We used the "kill all the adds first" strategy, and it worked great! I forgot what dropped, but I do know it was sharded! Everyone couldn't believe that the first Moroes drop was sharded, but nobody could use or wanted whatever it was. The raid leader decided to end the night on that high note.

Saturday, I really had a burn to level Daxie, when Valray asked if I wanted to go to Kara again. Maiden and Opera were on the list; I hated to stop leveling Daxie, but I also knew that I was the last piece of the raid. So, I went.

We cleared to Maiden with no problems, and we cleared out a room with a quest item in it. I died on that pull because my shackle broke early and my reshackle was resisted. We then proceeded to learn the Maiden fight. ha ha.

I still don't know a lot about the Maiden fight. We attempted three times before deciding to move on to Opera. It appears to be mostly a tank 'n spank with positioning. We got the positioning down pretty good, but our coordination needed work as well as tanking in the center of the room. All in all, it was a good learning experience.

So, on to Opera, and we got.......Romulo and Julianne. The more experienced raiders groaned. They said that of all the Opera events, this one was the hardest. Great!

Some of the raid members were looking up the fight on the net, while others were trying to describe the strategy. What I understood from it was this:
1. Kill Julianne. Romulo then spawns.
2 Kill Romulo. Julianne rezzes and rezzes Romulo.
3. Pull the two star crossed lovers into opposite corners of the stage so Julianne can't heal her bf.
4. Get Romulo down to 10% or there abouts. Get Julianne down to 10% or so.
5. Bring them together in the center and nuke the crap out of them with AoE and stuff.

We had some issues. The first issue was actually getting them apart. Pulling them to opposite walls wasn't far enough; it had to be the corners. Then, we didn't stop the DoTs on Romulo in time and he died. Good? No! After about 10 seconds, Julianne rezzed him. At. Full. Health. Crud! The problem with the strat was #5. We didn't get them down that evening.

Sunday. Daxie is on fire, again. And...I get the call AGAIN! By now, Daxie is part of DA, so I'm feeling obligated somewhat to help out on progression with Dax. So, I reluctantly leave Daxie to raid. Opera only this time. Maiden is optional anyways.

After wiping a couple of times, we make some refinements to the fight. 1-3 are still the same, but we have a new #4 and #5.

4. Get Romulo down to 20% and STOP ALL DOTS! Get him down to 10% with normal DPS.
5. Get Julianne down to 10% and kill Romulo. Then nuke the crap out of Julianne before the 10 seconds is up. If the two die within 10 seconds of each other, then you don't have to worry about rezzes.

This strategy worked. We had some execution issues, but we finally got it coordinated. They dropped some hunter lurvin's, so Thoon made out!

One of the biggest bonuses that came out of this fight was trust. As one of three healers, I was the PuG. I haven't been part of the guild, and the other healers don't really know me or my style of healing. So, when I was assigned raid healing, I took it upon myself to....erm....heal the raid.

Raid healing on this fight is fairly straightforward. Julianne throws a DoT on raid members that can potentially kill them if they don't get a good heal. It's not dispellable and hits for pretty good damage. My first strat was to put a Renew on them. Not good. Given time, the Renew would patch them back up, but if they got DoT'd again, they were toast. So I learned as soon as I saw a raid member get hit, to start a Greater Heal on them. By the time the GH was cast, the DoT had run its course and the GH would heal them back up.

On the first couple of attempts, the other two healers were healing the MT and OT, AND they were spot healing the raid. This caused both of them to be low on or out of Mana when the two rezzes happened. At first I was assigned to pick up a third tank for the transition because I had almost full Mana. But after I realized what was happening, I started calling out on Vent who I was healing. "I gotcha So And So", "Healing This Guy", "Healing myself", and the like. I found out later that one of the other healers started interrupting his heals because he heard me call that out. Mana saved!

When this happened, we took down the bosses. Yes, it was still tough,and we tweaked the strat a bit, but minimizing the double healing was a big part of it. Trust. The other healers trusted me to see the needs of the raid and respond accordingly. Communication and coordination are so important in raiding not only to work out the strategy, but also because by them you learn to trust each other. I can see now how a guild can clear Kara in 4 hours. I guarantee you they didn't do that the first hundred times! They learned through the wipes: what strats worked, who does what, and how to place their lives in each other's hands.

Opera DOWN!!! WOOOOOOOT!