Raiding - Stuck at Maidens

Having just been released on LFR the past week, a few people would have an idea of the fight.

There's a lot happening on this fight, and if you pay attention to the mechanics then the fight is not too difficult.  However, there are so many places to make mistakes and can be detrimental to the raid. In fact, when we kill this boss, this fight would make a great bedtime story for my daughter.

There are 3 bosses - Gar'an, Sorka and Marak, real badass looking orc females. Every now and then one of them jumps on a boat and a group of us has to go up there and fight them.  On the ground, there are bombs being chucked around and there is a way to dodge them that isn't too hard if you're not doing other things, but there are also other things happening too.  There's a penetrating shot, where Ga'ran aims a red line at a raid member and everyone has to jump in and soak it to spread the damage (like in Paragons of the Klaxxi in SoO). Then there is Blood ritual (the squiggly red line) which is a cone attack From Marakwhich causes huge damage to people affected so we get people with that to run to a designated spot and the tank soaks the damage and everyone else runs the hell away.  Ga'ran does Rapid fire as well, which is shot blast that the targetted person kite away and a path of explosions goes where they've been.

Sounds busy right?

One of the things our raid has decided to do is sacrifice someone when we get to the turret stage (which is when the bosses are under 20%).  There is so much going on that people can't seem to get together for the line and then the people who do make it all die.  So, it was decided to save the rezzes for then (and Hand of Protection a couple of ones too - poor Xyn is the only paladin so he's busy) and dodge turret fire and burn one boss down.

I've got a pretty easy job - I get sent up to the boat.  It's good for mana, and I didn't have to deal with the bombs, and I did worry a little - I wasn't getting practice on the bomb dance and I didn't want to stuff it up when the time came.

So I pugged it for practice (like I did for Thogar) in the previous raid week and the group I did it with played a little differently to how we do it. Firstly, they had 4 hunters. FOUR!  That would be nice for cheesing the Penetrating shot!  And also they soaked every single penetrating shot.  They had way more ranged than us - our raid is heavier in melee than ranged.  We have 2 hunters, 2 ele shamans, a shadow priest, a warlock and a mage; and melee wise we have 2 warriors, 3 death knights, an enhance shaman, a monk and a paladin. I had fun practicing the bombs and I think I've got the hang of it now that I won't be a total liability when I am down on the ground.

We've had a few nights on it now and we're still having issues with the occasional early death from people not moving for a bomb or running a Blood ritual through a bad spot and wiping out some melee. Heartseeker and Dark Hunt are also two high damage abilities that people like ignoring but I run away with my Heartseeker and don't take much damage but the others sometimes get a fair whack by being too close.  Also, when we went to the last bosses the melee were getting pissed off at trying to hit Ga'ran who stands next to a turret and goes all over the place and it was decided we'd kill off Marak first.

I was so happy when I saw Kelthal, Ultra, Una or Dragonray targetted by the Penetrating shot.  Bish took Spectral Guise (honestly, I thought that was only for shadow priests) and he could finally cheese that too.

We got pretty close but no banana. Hwired yelled a bit and apologised straight after, but it was rather frustrating, knowing we were so close but yet so far!  Healers cycled cooldowns whilst we waited for the DPS to kill one of the maidens but we always lost too many people to be able to recover.  Turrets seemed to go down in a reasonable time. It's just trying to stop bad deaths in the beginning and have everyone alive at the end, and we should have it.

Next week will be different as we will all suddenly have upgraded gear.  It might make the fight easier, but we still have to dodge bad things. I hope we can get it down - it will be very satisfying to crush those bloody orcs and snag ourselves some tier.