Brothers in Arms

In the last week, the second wing of ICC opened up. Having cleared the first wing on 10 and 25 man, the guild I'm in quickly dispatched the first four bosses and stood in the shadow of the new wing. Many promptly died to Frogger v2.0. Hurrah for slow loading times.

25 man

We tried our hand at 25man first, blindly chose a direction and ended up in front of Rotface. Now, this is the guy with the slimes. He's all about the slimes. We had quite a few wipes on this guy figuring out the slimes and getting everyone on board, but we eventually killed him. I can't stress this enough: He who controls the slimes, controls the fight...or something like that.

Next we wandered over to Festergut. This fight is an interesting one (mainly for healers) because it switches from Tank heal intensive to Raid heal intensive and back again. And man, when I say intensive Tank heals...I mean intensive Tank heals. On 25man, our stumbling block was tank death. You need to pull out every CD you have to keep a tank alive when Festergut has 3 inhales (90% more damage / 90% haste). Our first night on this guy, we spent a good hour, hour and a half wiping because we couldn't keep a tank alive through the 3 inhale phase. Our second night there, we finally kept a tank alive (once) but then we hit the 5min enrage when he was at 10%.

10 man

Our 10man team was the exact opposite. We spent an hour to an hour and a half on Rotface, dying horrible deaths. We switched to three healers and still someone died. This fight is harder on 10man in my opinion. Looking back, I think I know why. It's the ratio of healers to heal targets (at any given time). There should only be three(ish) people taking damage during Rotface: The MT who is getting hit by Rotface, the OT who is kiting the ooze, and the person(s) who is infected. Typical 25man has 6 healers, two for each role. Typical 10man has 2-3 healers, at best one for each role. In 25man if a healer gets infected, they have a back up. In 10man if a healer gets infected, they have to try and still heal effectively while moving the little ooze to merge with the big ooze.

After our spirits were crushed from our (many, many...many) defeats at the hands of Rotface, we trudged over to Festergut. We had a few learning attempts, with each getting better and better. Then we finally got him down (even if we ended up with 4 people alive, a win is a win). For this guy, being a shaman healer was nice. Shamans have the nice flexibility of tank or raid healing. Chain Heal the melee when they're taking the brunt of the damage, Lesser Healing Wave after first and second inhales, Healing Wave after the third. Rinse. Repeat. Our tank still died (poorly timed heals after a big hit), but so did Festergut and we were happy.

Wrap up

All in all the new wing is challenging, much like the first wing was our first week. I believe that we'll be able to get to Professor Putricide this week in both our 10 and 25man raids. (Actually, our other 10man group got a look at him already). Hopefully the second wing becomes like the first wing and we start one shotting bosses.