Reversion and I have decided we’re going to pug ICC every Friday night. We’ve started building a stable of friends who we’ve pugged previously, enjoyed working with, and asked. This week, though, we’d been online for an hour and only had one of our stable available. Meanwhile we’d pugged the weekly (Sarth; Reversion is delighting in single tanking that encounter although I’d like to try with dragons up sometime to get the achievement, most pugs don’t want to bother)
So we whispered a particularly likely-sounding group that was forming in Trade; the leader said he was screening gear because they were hoping to go 7 or 8 out of 12. I told him Rev and I were a pair, tank and heals, if he wanted us, and he did. We got our friend Dontyouwish the Hunter in too; he’s been our best addition to our ICC pug so far, topping meters and always ready to go with us.
Raid comp was suprisingly balanced, for having 3 hunters, 2 druids and 2 pallies; I was concerned that having only one technically melee dps (enhance shammy who would go resto when we needed it) might be a problem but then realized that since hunters count as physical DPS for Deathwhisper we had little to worry about. One thing I actually enjoy about pugged raids is that you work with what you can get, not perfect balance. The raid leader brought Runescrolls of Fortitude, we had to actually discuss which pally buffs to use on who (yay for druids arguing might vs wisdom!) and every fight, we stopped and discussed strategy first. I enjoyed seeing slightly different strategies on the first four fights that I thought I’d learned cold. Mostly the difference was where we threw Heroism. This raid group was fond of throwing it right off the bat where a lot of raids I’ve been on wait for 30%, no matter what.
Very professional handling of the first wing. Half the raid was from a guild, the rest of us pugged in. Being Friday night, the beer started flowing and we started making mistakes after Saurfang. Actually on Saurfang someone in melee kept a beast in too long and we ended up with two marks going out, but we did one-shot him. And he dropped pants for me, so yay.
Festergut took three tries. One of the hunters managed to die right off the bat, there was Vile Gas in melee, we wiped. Most likely my fault for being slow to heal the hunter, but oh well, Mistakes Were Made. We did down him, and moved on to Rotface. There were a number of people who hadn’t seen the fight at all, and it took two wipes to get the mechanics right. Reversion and I had downed him twice on 25 man, but never on 10 man, so dropping him was a triumph of a sort.
By this point, the beer debuff was getting bad. We moved to the Professor, and even more people admitted not knowing the fight, including me and Rev. The pugged in shaman took over and explained mechanics (in an excellent Australian accent. He’s on my “ICC pug stable” list now, for excellence in general and the accent didn’t hurt). We started, got to 20%, wiped. Came back, got into phase 2, wiped but thought things were going better. Attempt three – the excellent shaman dropped a cleansing totem, Reversion lost his Abom, couldn’t get power back in time, and we wiped.
Unfortunately that ended up being It for the night, since it was late, people were drunk and tired, and the other tank had a “Sorry, Guild Run” emergency. Still; personal progression! One of these days the Lich King will buy it.
