Raiding - Frostwolves first Mythic kill!

The title is a bit of a spoiler, but yes, we managed to down Mythic Kargath last night!

I had some pre raid worries, nothing big, nothing more stressful than say, trying to figure out which pair of underpants to put on after you shower, or which pair of socks I want to wear with my sports shoes. Were we going to get 20 people? What if we got WAAAY more than 20 people who would I sit out?  The first one was easy - if we don't get 20, we're not doing mythic. The second concern was a bit tougher - if we get more than 20 then I'll go on volunteers and low attendances.

So we had exactly 4 healers turn up - 3 druids and a shaman (Alca has decided to go back to his shaman which is great - firstly because that gets his rogue out of my tier, and secondly because it's nice to have a healer that's not a druid or a priest and thirdly his shaman is an amazing healer).  Morz was going to be out doing fitness stuff and Bish was going to be late, but he would be on.  Koda said that she was tired after having had a fun day out in the city after seeing Wicked the musical and visiting the museum, and was happy to sit out for Bish.  Dragonray and Madcow offered to sit out, which meant we had ZERO mages in raid.

So we were all pumped, and ready to go.  Then the funnies began.

Amayeti kept disconnecting.  Not sure why, but on each pull she'd freeze or disconnect. I was already going to let Koda relax, but it looked like I might have to keep her.  And then Bish was coming on so I let Amayeti see if she could fix her computer and net, and let Koda go out and got Bish in.  I asked Crooked if he could offheal for me and he said he would.  Which, by the way was very kind of him since he was the #1 damage for heroic Kargath, and asking him to heal was a big loss.  But he did it with no complaints though in hindsight I'd probably get Cptsars to heal to cut the melee down a bit. In fact, I am going to use Crooked as my prime example the next time somebody whinges about having to do a particular raid assignment making their DPS lower.

Well, it was like a disease.  Bish AND Amayeti could not stay online.  I was so bummed, I had to remove them both from the raid and Koda came back.  I was about to get Nok to switch is mistwalker offspec and heal but Alca said that we probably could do it with 4 healers - most of the things killing people are one shot mechanics anyway and no number of healers is going to improve that.  So I got Madcow back in and we went with 4 healers.

For those who haven't done Mythic, it has a few extra things compared to Normal/Heroic.  Firstly, there is this crowd cheering bar at the bottom "Roar of the Crowd".  It basically is a bar that says how much the crowd is cheering for you, and the more favour you have the more damage you will do. You gain favour by going up into the stands and killing Iron Grunts and also the Bileslingers and Bombers (coz they're assholes and the heckle you which makes you lose favour, as well as throw crap at the raiders in the arena which hurts).  You also gain favour when you kite Kargath's Beserker rush around before you make him run into a fire pillar - I guess the crowd loves a good show. We actually found it VERY difficult to kite him unless you were a hunter with a double deterrence and a Hand of Protection, so after a few tries of people kiting him and failing because he runs so damned fast, we decided to forget the kiting, do it how we normally do it so people can actually LIVE.  Losing favour is more of an issue.  If the person who is targetted by Beserker rush dies, we lose ALL of our favour.

One thing we did notice also was that if Kargath killed someone in his path whilst doing Berserker rush he would suddenly target someone else.

The other thing was the tigers in the pits now jump out and chase you. You have to run them into fire pillars and then they'll start spinning around in circles and will take more damage so then ranged have to get them down.

So our first hiccup was a healer one - trying to stay connected.  Then we had great amusement as the melee tried to figure out where to stand so they wouldn't die.  After a few times we started betting on which melee would die on the first berserker rush.  Hwired was having a shocker and it was probably just as well Disco wasn't there because he would probably have been a casualty as well. What ended up working was 2 seconds before the Berserker rush, the melee would back off from Kargath and see who he targetted.  It was great when he targetted a hunter - or rather, when he targetted Ultra.  Kel was having a DREADFUL time trying to kite and deter that we had to change it so that there was NO kiting at all, and he just stood still, double deterred and got a hand of Protection. HOP people! Not BOP.

I went up in the stands - normally Amayeti goes. Do you know what I had difficulty with?  Jumping OUT of the stands.  "Jump down!" Exray or Ultra would yell and there I was trying to jump off not being able to get over the wall... panicking... and worse it was all on live stream because Dragonray wanted to watch.  SHOWING LEET SKILLZ THERE!

So I started practicing jumping up onto the edge and healing and then jumping off, and one time I jumped off following Ultra and then thought OMG I went too early!! Because next thing you know, Aza was dead.  I felt so bad.  Everyone was laughing... but it turned out they were laughing because Aza had jumped from the stands straight into a tiger pit.  Phew. Not my fault then!

We had one attempt where we were so close. 4% HOLY CRAP!  We actually CAN do this!

A few more goes after that, we nailed it.  It was dead.  OMG our first Mythic boss of the expansion!

Now this is actually a Frostwolves first - usually we never even clear the bosses on normal before the next tier comes out (and technically we still haven't - we still have heroic Imperator to go), and to do a mythic boss in the first released raid of an expansion, it's pretty exciting!

Loot was pretty awesome!  A few of us rolled some loot - me with warforged Throat-Ripper Gauntlets (and a socket!), Koda got Kargath's last link, Aimei got Chestguard of the Roaring Crowd, Snowcaller got Casque of the Iron Bomber, and Lushen got The Bladefist.  Loot was snapped up quickly too, with Luxy and Crooked getting Grips of Vicious Mauling, Lushen getting warforged Throat Ripper Gauntlets, Duck got Casque of the Iron Bomber and Una got Vilebreath Mask.

Great work Frostwolves! Now, to get Imperator down!