Although some people had defeated Rotface in PUGs or with other guilds, Carpe Flux Capacitor as a whole has been unable to defeat 10-man Rotface until this past Tuesday (as I mentioned previously). I had the privilidge of raiding that time, which was my first time in the Plagueworks and second time in Icecrown Citadel, not considering fail PUGs that started on Deathbringer Saurfang, fail guild runs filled with alts and PUGs, and trash runs.
It was really interesting. Festergut was a fun but not very hard fight. I was marked, and the ranged were told to clump on me where I was standing when Festergut used Gas Spore. That just made it extra easy because I didn’t have to move, although I also felt special that people came to me (even if I didn’t do anything).
Rotface was just awesome. Struggling with the guild and trying different tactics is still new to me. It just felt amazing. We had three healers, and on our first couple attempts, we didn’t coordinate. After a few wipes, we decided to be a little more organized. We had one designated tank/melee healer, one raid healer, and one healer focusing on the off-tank kiting the Big Ooze and the players running to him. I was the off-tank healer (and Mutated Infection remover). This made things go much more smoothly.
As Tydros, the off-tank, ran around the perimeter, I made smaller circles on the inside so I could stay near him. I could probably have done my job with a lot less moving, but it made it easier to be near him and watching. There were still a couple problems. First, healing someone running to Tydros wasn’t a big deal, but healing myself while running to him was a bigger deal. I can’t actually say that this caused problems for the group, but it really disoriented me. Another problem was multiple slimes being up at the same time. Sometimes someone with Mutated Infection wouldn’t get to the off-tank in time, leaving a Small Ooze somewhere else. Similarly, this means that sometimes a Big Ooze was exploding while other Small Oozes already existed.
The last problem was that people sometimes were unable to find the off-tank. He was marked at the start of each attempt, but after he got Mutated Infection, he would become marked with a different mark. After the infection was removed, he would no longer be marked, and neither of us (the two people worrying about Mutated Infection) had the ability to remark. I pointed this out, and he was given Assist so he could remark himself if needed. Eventually, on what was to be our last attempt, we got him really low before wiping, so decided to give it one more go. That last attempt (duh) was when we finally downed Rotface.
I also wanted to mention something about ICC-25. I’ve only done a 25-man once, and it was an Icecrown Citadel PUG on a Monday night before raid resets. I had between 800 and 1500 ms latency (most likely due to there being two people sharing Wi-Fi both in 25-mans and both running Vent). The lag kind of sucked. I wouldn’t want to try another 25-man in which people depend on me unless it was a guild run and I could do trash as a trial or a bad PUG that I didn’t care about. Anyways, as a disc priest, I felt that my role was much more defined in 25-man. In 10-mans, even when I’m “tank healing,” I’m still doing extra healing. In the 25-man, I focused just on the tanks. It also seemed like had I not been lagging my Penance could actually heal the tank rather than become overhealing. Regardless, these thoughts on doing 25-mans are just from the one 25-man raid I did before going with on the run that killed Rotface. This is important to note because while that was the first time I felt like my role was really defined, it was before I had that awesome ICC-10 experience. In fact, we had much more coordination as a guild on the 10-man run than the PUG on the 25-man. Still, I’d be interested in trying 25-man content in the future.