Wiping

I wiped on ToC 10 tonight. Five times we died on the Northern Beasts. And it was one of the most fun experiences I have ever had while raiding.

I've been in raids before where we have wiped repeatedly, Naxx, Maly, Sarth and Uld, but I didn't have much fun with those. There we were dying for stupid reasons, someone standing in the fire, someone popping AoD.

When I went into ICC for the first time (10-man, I was tanking) it was absolutely thrilling, but after killing the trash and wiping to Lord Marrowgar three or four times, I, like the rest of the pug, got bored and left.

I think part of it was that ToC is a challenge for us. It requires a skill level and gear level just about where we average out. Another thing is the lack of trash, the quick pace of the fights, and the need to be aware of several events.

The fight we were wiping on, the first one, Northern Beasts, is a three part fight where the two tanks taunt off each other because of a stacking bleed. Not difficult, but requires some attention. In many ways it was similar to Gluth.

The second part also requires two tanks, there are two different mobs. One needs to be kited, because, similar to Grobbulus, he farts out toxic clouds. The other is stationary, but on occasion, the two worms burrow and switch roles, requiring some concentration on the part of the tanks.

The final part was fun, especially because at that point the OT, one of the healers, and four DPS had died, so we had a resto druid, resto shaman, frost mage and myself, prot paladin. We could have gone on forever, until the enrage timer blew after a total of fifteen minutes of fighting.

Another part that kept me interested was a specific piece of loot that I knew these guys dropped and would have been a huge upgrade (232 Raid Epic vs. 200 Heroic Blue). Anyways, after our five wipes (hour and a half) we decided to go try our hand at Onyxia.

Me and the other tank pulled the trash outside her room to quickly and we wiped on those. Then we one shot Onyxia, with only one person still dead at the end (of course, we had three druids with Battle Rezes up, a shaman with reincarnation, a warlock who threw out a soul stone, and myself with Ardent Defender). It was the first time since before 3.2.2 that I had killed Ony, of course, back then I could solo her easily and did so regularly.