VoA and OS-10 Man... and Gluth, you dog!

Yesterday we went ahead and hit up VoA and OS-10 Man. And walloped everything. Where 8 of the 10 people present had never been there before.

On these guys, where they aren't undead (grumble), I was lowest on the DPS meter. LOWEST! I sob, I writhe in shame, and I wonder what I was doing wrong. I know I can hit higher than 1800, but in VoA and OS, I was somewhere in the 1800-2100 range.

Was it the Heath Bar that I was eating at the time? Who knows!

But I did notice that when I was Johnny on the Spot in terms of hitting my next spell as soon as it became available, my DPS jumped at least 100 points. :P I think in VoA it was low because of all the dodging about we melee'ers had to do. And in OS, again, lots of running around. And one of the tanks kept moving. *narrow eyed glare* No movey of the mobs. Moving mobs make melee DPS irritable.

Then since we waltzed through those two raids with nary a scratch (I think the only death we had was Boon, who DI'd Kyuushi (Sartherion has 5% health left, oh my god, we're going to fail, someone DI me!) after Sartherion was dead. Don't ask. It's a joke of some sort between the two of them.)), we decided to hit up the Abomination Quarter in Naxx-10.

So we went ahead and two-shotted Patchwerk -- when the MT dies because the OT didn't yet have secondary aggro to eat the hateful strikes, usually means a wipe. Because then the OT becomes the MT, and the new OT is the retribution paladin, who dies very quickly.

And then we cleaned up Globbulus. And then we went to Gluth. Gluth, the doggie that we've never managed to get down before. We had issues with the kiting of the Zombie Chow.

In the past, we'd have one kiter, who would try to do all three waves. This never worked well because the stacking debuff got too high.

Our next best attempt was we tried to have two kiters, swapping them out between waves so the debuff fell off. The problem with this was that the second kiter, a hunter, couldn't gain enough aggro on the chow to pull them off the healers.

Finally though, last night we had two retribution paladins in the raid.

I took the first wave. Hunter's laid their freezy trap in the middle grate, and I ran around in circles. With righteous fury and exorcism and judgements, not to mention the very very useful holy wrath, I kept aggro on all the chow, kept them from eating me, and was able to stop them in place when decimate triggered.

The second wave the other retribution paladin took. It was his first time kiting, as opposed to me who has tried about three other times to kite them, and he wound up dying towards the end of his 'wave'. Given that the mobs were way in the back anyway, and decimate was close, I stayed on the boss. When decimate hit, I ran back, holy wrath'd and then went back to kiting.

Third wave went much the same as the first. The hunter traps started to get misplaced to the side, but given the multi-tasking the hunters had to do, who am I to complain? (Silly hunters.) I had to blow my bubble towards the end, but then holy wrath'd them in place. Then decimate fell upon their heads and they died.

But without a second kiter, I had to take the beginning of the fourth wave while still under the effects of the earlier debuffing I took. I did my best, but when the stacks start to climb into the 40-50 range... anyway, I went ahead and died as far back in the chamber as I could, so they'd have the longest time to get to Gluth. And Gluth died before they could reach him (and before he could enrage).

All in all, a beautiful (or at least, not horribly decimated) one-shot of a previously unattainable boss. Two ret pallies and the boss dead? DEAL!

We then stopped Naxx and took a brief detour into Dustwallow Marsh to go ahead and down Onyxia for the achievement.

On a side note, Iceravens from our guild... solo'd her. It took him, he says, about 35-40 minutes. I don't know if he was prot or ret specced for the attempt. But I don't know whether to be proud (I am!) or sad (a 40 man classic raid boss is now soloable?).