Priestly Bubbles

This is going to be a long one.  (Well a bunch of little ones in one post.)
Anub-ToGC25
Last Thursday, I was able to step into a ToGC25 on Anub with 50 attempts left.  It was very much a mix between ToC25 and ToGC10.  The strategy was fairly simple.  Three very spread out ice patches were dropped (four if you include the "tank" patch).  The person targeted in Phase 2 ran to the outside of one of the ice patches (order was back, front, back).  A paladin would bubble the raider, allowing the raider to stand in the spikes until the bubble is almost up.  Then the raider runs onto the ice patch, stunning Anub.
On Phase 3, the healers focused on keeping Penetrating Cold targets alive.  The groups were kept up with passive healing.  However, this isn't failproof.  Myself and a couple others died from the Leeching Swarm at the very end.
With 48 attempts left, I finally finished ToGC25.  And we got our Mad Skills achievement.
Update:  This week we had some major server lag on Tuesday. Both guilds in the race for server first Tribute to Insanity wiped on Anub25 heroic. Next week, we have it!

Yogg +0
Monday night, we worked on Yogg +0.  Fairly simple until Phase 3.  You just don't have Hodir's random ice block if you die or Freya's beams of sanity.  So you have to really watch your sanity.  What does Mimiron do again?  Oh well, I guess it wasn't important.  Phase 3 gets very difficult.  Thorim is not there to kill the adds so they will continue to spawn until Yogg dies.  The good thing is that their damage is minimal when at 1% health.  They have to be dpsed down just as much as Yogg.  I'm not sure if we have decided on a strategy for this yet.

Blood Prince Council
Now that we're up to speed...this week.  Curious, we went to the Blood Prince Council first after the first wing.  When you enter the room, you see three dead princes lying on a platform.  Above them Blood Queen Lana'thel hovers, channeling a spell.  On the left we have Keleseth from Utgarde Keep, Valanar from Naxxanar, and on the right we have Taldaram from Ahn'kahet.  After killing the trash and walking a little bit further into the room, you will see Lana'thel rez the three princes and fly up into her room.
The princes have a "shared" health pool, however only one will have the health pool at any point in time.  This is the one that must be dpsed.  They gain a buff called Invocation of Blood, and they basically become more annoying.
Keleseth
This one needs to be range tanked.  His abilities are single target only.  He melees for around 60k so the ranged tank must stay away.  He does a Shadow lance for a good deal of damage.  His Empowered Shadow lance will one shot the ranged tank if he does not have any Dark Nuclei.  Dark Nuclei are large purple orbs that spawn around the room.  They attach either to the closest raid member or the last raider to hit them.  They decrease shadow damage.  The ranged tank must have three to survive Empowered Shadow lance.  They will slowly kill themselves.  The best plan, it seemed, was to have another ranged pick these up and bring them to the ranged tank.  At the beginning, the ranged tank will probably be hit by a few Shadow lances before he has any Dark Nuclei.  Healers should use cooldowns to keep him up.
Valanar
This prince to me is the most annoying.  First he throws a kinetic bomb into the air.  It must be kept in the air or it will explode, dealing a ton of damage and knocking over everyone back.  His main ability is a shock vortex.  It appears as a small circle of electricity on the ground.  All raiders must get 13 yards away from it.  It deals damage and a knockback.  Empowered Shock Vortex is much more difficult.  All raiders within 30 yards will get this under their feet.  All raiders within 15 yards of them will be hit by it.  Melee must get out and away from other raiders.
Taldaram
This is the fire prince.  He inflicts Glitter upon his enemies.  Yes....glitter.  How threatening.  This can be dealt with by simply dispelling any raider who has it.  Conjured Flame targets a player and flies towards them.  Any player near the targeted player should move away to avoid extra damage.  The Empowered Conjured Flame does much more damage but will do less and less the more flares it throws out.  These are little flames that do a small amount of damage to nearby raiders.  
That's the fight in a nutshell.  Not too hard when you get it down.

Professor Putricide
Finally got this down on 10 and 25.  It's a three phase fight.  Each time he drinks a new flask, he gains a new ability and gets uglier.
Phase 1
For the first phase he summons slime pools around the room.  The person in the Abomination (this should be your offtank) needs to eat these to keep them under control.    Putricide casts a spell called Unstable Experiment. This experiment switches back and forth between spawning a green ooze and spawning an orange ooze. DPS should kill these quickly. The fight starts with green. The green ooze will pick a target a few seconds after it has spawned and attach itself to that target with a long green tether. That raider will take damage and be unable to move. When the ooze gets to its target it will dish out an AoE that will one shot if several raiders aren’t stacked on top of the target. A spread out/collapse rotation must be used. The orange ooze uses a tether as well but the raider is able to move. Nothing will save the raider if the ooze gets to them so they must kite him against the wall while the ooze is quickly killed. (Body and Soul is great for this.) At 80%, Putricide will cast tear gas, freezing everyone in place and run to his experiment table. Try to get him to 80% when there are no oozes up.
Phase 2
Putricide will drink one of the flasks on his table, causing him to sprout tentacles from his back. This gives him a couple of new abilities. One is a gas bomb, which appears as two small orange flasks on the ground. The tank must now begin kiting him. The second is Malleable Goo, which our raid refers to as “flippies”. He also retains the abilities he had in phase 1. At 35% he casts tear gas again to go into the last phase. Watch for the oozes; it’s even worse to have one up in Phase 3.
Phase 3
The tank in the abom will get thrown out and the abom will despawn. The two tanks must now start a taunting rotation as Putricide gets stronger. Towards the end of the fight, tanks and healers must pop cooldowns on the tanks to keep them up. Beware of the slime pools, flippies, gas bombs and ticking AoE. Get through this phase quickly and you have him!

Best in Show
We went back and killed Festergut and Rotface.  When we killed Precious, I noticed the loot was assigned to me.  I crossed my fingers and searched the corpse.  There it was!  My very own Precious's Ribbon!  It gives a silly little buff that says "Best in Show" and doesn't look too bad.

I also received my Perky Pug.  Cute little thing.

I’m absolutely loving the new guild. I feel like I’m already starting to fit in and find my place.

I apologize for the long blog.  I've been busy still unpacking!  I'll attempt to keep up with it more.
Plague wing healing guide to come soon!

Loot from the past two weeks:
Ashen Band of Endless Wisdom-finally got my rep ring
Kilt of Untreated Wounds-last week's ICC 10 man, gemmed with spell power and intellect (since I needed a lot for BQL)
Amulet of the Silent Eulogy-got this for offspec, but it's better than what I was using for mainspec! (Gemmed with hit for my offspec set...not sure what to do about that just yet.)
As of right now, I’m still using Nibelung to heal because of the increase of spell power over Illumination. Planning on Frozen Bonespike and Shadow Silk Spindle.
I have killed Blood Queen Lana’thel in 10 man but not 25. I’ll go over her abilities when we down her in 25.

I got to run with my new guild last night. It was a lot of fun. It was interesting to be the one learning instead of teaching. They were serious but fun. Marrowgar I got my first glimpse of the officers and how they work. I was just doing my thing like normal. Healing and avoiding things. On Lady Deathwhisper, the first phase went well. Second phase came along with the ghosts. I skirted along the outside of the semi circle, bubbling and trying not to clump up. Everywhere I went, ghosts spawned. I was trying desperately to survive. Looking like a tard in my first raid with a new guild was the last thing I needed. Finally I had a small break and was able to cast a few heals. At that exact moment, two ghosts spawned within 5 yards of me. One on either side. I watched helplessly as the two exploded almost simultaneously. My finger flew to my desperate prayer keybind and I was rewarded with “You can’t do that while dead.” Awesome.

“Goodbye new girl.” Several laughs.
As I lay there chewing on the floor, I realized two things. One, that when Lady Deathwhisper wants someone dead, she makes certain that it is accomplished. Too bad she was too fixated on making me look stupid to notice the raid kicking her ass. Two, that this guild didn’t know me well enough to know that me dying is a once in a blue moon thing.
“Goodbye new girl.”
Nymarie: -_-
I sheepishly accepted my rez and turned to talk to my friend who had come over to watch me in the new guild.
“I don’t die.”
“I know.”
“No you don’t understand. Nymarie doesn’t die.”
“Relax. Stop being so focused on making a good impression and just heal.”
I bit back a retort and turned back to the computer.

At the end of the first wing, I was asked to step out for a core healer so they could get Putricide. While speaking to the guild leader and one of the officers, I realized that my death hadn’t made a big impression. One of the officers assured me that I would get to see the second wing with them.


“Goodbye new girl.”

Yeah right. Looks like I’m here to stay.

So I made the switch to a more "hard core" guild.  It's a little more serious when it comes to raiding but still fun loving.  They have downed both Algalon 25 and heroic Anub 25 and have A Tribute to Skill.  Things that I envy.  >_>
I raid with them tomorrow (hopefully) and I'll let everyone know how it goes!
I'm kinda in between guilds and sorta in a transition phase so I'll blog about kitties!  Who doesn't love kitties?!?
So for now, I post about my demon child.  Oops, I mean pride and joy.

This was Little Nym.









She was dehydrated...
...overheated...
...malnourished...



Covered in fleas and plagued by worms








After cleaning her up and getting her healthy, she began to grow very quickly.










She became curious and playful.






This is what she is like now...(Random pictures)




Why you always sitting here playing on that computer thing?  Look at me!  I'm cute!  Pay attention to me!







You can't see me.
I am ninja!










Macbooks are for warming butts.











I see your wet hand creeping towards me.
No I don't want to get into the tub.








No you stay in the tub.
I'll stay here...next to your towel.









Oh dear...she got me in the tub.










Bitch...








The DRAIN!
It makes funny noises!










Mmm warm and dry in a towel with Mommy.

Wednesday night, we did our ICC10.  We killed Festergut fairly easily.  We went to Rotface and slowly learned the fight, but seemed to get him easily enough.  We had started fairly late so we didn't get any tries on Putricide.
Thursday night, we went back into 25 man and downed Festergut with 6 healers.  Rotface didn't take as long to learn as Festergut and we had him down towards the end of the raid.  We were able to get two attempts on Putricide.  I don't have much info on Putricide so I won't try to write about him just yet.  Let's just start with Rotface.

Rotface
Like Festergut, this is a very new sort of fight. It’s less confusing than Festergut but harder to execute in my opinion. The tank keeps Rotface in the middle of the room, with all of the raiders stacked behind him.
Rotface will target a raider and cast a poison debuff on them, much like the debuff from Grobbulus. Everyone else should stack on the tank (who will now be behind Rotface) to avoid the spray that he does. After he sprays, he will turn back to the tank and the raid must get behind him again.
The raider with the debuff must at first stand still while he turns to do his spray. When he is about to spray, it’s a good idea for that raider to start moving. The debuff can be dispelled or it will wear off. Either way produces a small add that starts off with a large amount of aggro on the raider that spawned it. It doesn’t do much damage.
The second raider that gets the debuff must run his little ooze into the first little ooze. They will meet up and form a big ooze. This add does a lot more damage than the small one and must be kite tanked around the outer ring.
As raiders get the debuff they should meet up with the kiting tank, drop their add and make sure that their add forms up with the big one. When enough adds converge, the add will explode and the cycle starts anew. If two small adds join up and a big one is already up, the two big ones will not come together and the aoe damage from the two makes this pretty much a wipe.
After he spawns enough adds for the big add to explode and despawn, the raid needs to spread out to avoid everyone being hit by all the add's explosions.  Once the add is finished exploding, run back in to the boss.
As if this isn’t enough to pay attention to, the adds will throw little poison pools on the ground that must be avoided and Putricide will be causing slime pipes to pour slime onto sides of the room. The slime doesn’t do as much damage as the little poison pools but it does slow you down quite a bit and should be avoided as much as possible.
Well that was a long explanation for a very fast paced fight. However disgusting these two bosses are, they are quite the interesting challenge. I can’t wait to see them on heroic.
He dropped the wand and I won:  Corpse Impaling Spike

Well this was a very short post but I'm attempting to finish up my Ulduar achievements for the Rusted Proto Drake!

Well, the new ICC wing came out yesterday. It makes the first four bosses look like easy mode heroics. My guild did not down any of them. However, it was a fantastic raid. We blew through the first four bosses. The Abacus did not drop again. How typical. I’ve been saving dkp for that bloody thing. But I did get one of my “wishlist” items. The ring from the Gunship battle. I gemmed it with the basic 23 spell power.


We then moved on to Festergut. There was a new version of Frogger directly after Saurfang. I wasn’t paying attention and when I was ported in, I took a step forward and died. It’s a fairly simple Frogger, just have to avoid the icy blasts that come out of the walls. They are very slow. The trash before Festergut was interesting, definitely keeping things alive. First you fight a Val’kyr that flies down and attacks you. Then two abominations that will do their little chain grip. You have to be careful or they will grip you into more enemies. A few more basic trash pulls and you come across Festergut’s puppies. One named Stinky and one named Precious. Needless to say Precious was not at all precious. The two puppies are basically the children of Gluth from Naxxramas. They both do a decimate. Stinky sends out rows of painful gas and Precious summons ghouls to eat and regain health. Precious must be kited around the room. After killing a few more geists, we were in Festergut’s room.

Festergut
This is definitely a new sort of boss. Forgive me if I don’t completely understand it, I have not been able to get on tankspot to look it up so I was just following orders last night. Basically, you need two tanks. These tanks must switch before 10 stacks of one debuff or they will explode. We didn’t test this so I’m not sure whether it just kills the tank or hurts the melee as well. The tanks will also get another stacking debuff increasing their damage taken as the fight goes on. (This is incorrect.  See the edit below.) We discovered that spammy heals aren’t enough. Healers and tanks need to be rotating cooldowns. After fixing our cooldown rotation, we got to the enrage every time with both tanks alive. Thursday, we just need every raider to focus on staying alive. The ranged must be spread out 10 yards apart around the room. Festergut will send out a debuff that causes the raider to vomit, which means they are incapacitated for a few seconds. This debuff will hit anybody within a ten yards range of its target. He also sends out spores into the raid. Each spore will land on a raider’s head. Every single raider must be near a spore when they explode. He does this three times. Every raider must have three stacks of the buff from these spores when he does his aoe or they will not survive. After he does his aoe, he starts the spore-spore-spore-aoe rotation all over again. He’s on a five minute enrage timer, which makes the fight very difficult. I think the best way to do this fight is with 6 healers and 2 tanks. We’ll see what we’re going to do on Thursday.

Even though we didn’t down any of the new bosses, last night was a good raid. Everyone was in a cheery mood, excited to see new content. We all worked together, giving advice to each other and thinking up solutions to the different problems that Festergut presented. This is one of the reasons I truly love my guild. I left the raid in a good mood even having wiped on Festergut for almost two hours. I know we’ll get him Thursday and I’m sure I’ll get to kill him in a 10 man tonight. The 10 man tonight will also give us more experience with him and possibly more ideas and options.

Perhaps it’s not an accident that ever since last Tuesday, I’ve gotten Oculus only twice. Perhaps they hotfixed something. Perhaps they knew something was wrong. Whatever they did, I’m pleased with it. If I continue to get heroics other than Oculus, I will go back to doing Oculus whenever I get it.