The Tale of Two Raids, Part II

Friday night, I was invited to a mostly guild run by Untold Darkness of Naxx. Teurion, Dwarfvader, and a very well geared DK were the only pugged members of the raid.

We cleared the Spider wing and downed Patchwerk while I was part of the raid, and the raid continued after I bowed out to down two more bosses.

I was very happy with my performance.

- I was number 2 on the damage meter to the aforementioned DK
- I did not require a battle rez
- I was successful in freeing people from the web cocoon on the spider boss
- I moved when I needed to
- None of the wipes were due to my stupidity, inaction, or ineptitude

Yay on me.

There were several wipes in the beginning which were a result of being on Heroic Naxx instead of the 10 man version....DOH! I was pretty impressed that we actually did several trash pulls semi-successfully before we realized that the difficulty level was the wrong one.

Once we got the difficulty right, we had a pretty smooth run. There were still wipes due to some of us not knowing the fights, but all in all, we had a good pace, good play, and a good time. We didn't get into the blame game, and I think that everyone understood and learned from the wipes.

Now, I'm always one to blow my own horn, so don't be surprised that I take huge credit for our success on the big spider boss, Maexxna (or something like that). Let's see how far I can push my tongue into my cheek...

Once we wiped on the boss and figured out that the person in the cocoon had to be freed in short order, I volunteered to be in charge of that activity. We were having the off tank do it, and they did a good job, but they had to get to the person first before being able to free them.

Of course, as a ranged toon, I could stay where I was, target them (macro! /tar web), and pewpewpew. I'd make sure to watch the raid warnings for an indication of when it was going to happen and start spamming my macro button until my target changed. After that, if I was in range, I'd rotate until I started shooting. If I wasn't in range, I'd move toward them while spamming Arcane Shot to get things started.

The result was that people were freed much quicker than the first try, and Maexxna went down. The downside for me was my DPS suffered, to which I say "/shrug". I'll gladly sacrifice my place on the damage meter if it means we get a boss kill. Of course, it turned out that by the end of the evening, I was able to climb back into the number 2 slot, so it worked out in that area as well.

So, two raids, two different performances. I am glad that I realized what I did wrong in the first one and have a plan to rectify the situation when I go back. As long as I can glean something of use off a poor situation, I count it as a gain!