The Die Is Cast

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The march on Icecrown Citadel continues for TDC. For the past few raids we've been working on Blood Queen Lana'thel. This is a fun, fast fight that requires excellent situational awareness and depends on everyone doing their job effectively. One mistake can cause a raid wipe, as we have much cause to know. However, this story has a happy ending, as you will soon see...

The BQ fight is primarily focused around the "bite" mechanic; this is a "debuff" that is applied first by BQ, then subsequently requires the affected raider to bite another raider after a set period of time. The bite serves to increase dps of the affected raider, and the increased dps from the geometric increase in affected raiders is essential in downing BQ before the short enrage timer of 5 minutes expires. While dealing with juggling bites across the raid, the group also must contend with a number of other factors, including Swarming Shadows (a Jaraxxus-like dot), Pact of the Darkfallen (three raiders being leashed together with a damage component that can only be dispelled by the three affected raiders moving together to a central point), and the oh-so-fun air phase of the encounter, where BQ rises into the air, fears the raid, then casts Whirling Bloodbolts that increase in damage if a raider is within 6 yards of anyone else. These effects require excellent awareness from the entire team, and make it very easy to lose raiders very quickly, which makes killing BQ within the 5 minute enrage timer impossible. We LOVE this kind of challenge!

TDC spent a fair amount of time on BQ; we had a number of new raiders join that needed to see the fight a few times in order to understand the flow, and we had a lot of instances where we'd lose focus and thus fall prey to one of the many raid killing abilities BQ had on offer. As we approached our final attempt last night, we tried everything we knew to get over the hump; jokes, song, bad renditions of Queen's epic "Flash", everything. Finally, in typical TDC fashion, our last attempt was the charm. With Avi's Dinosaur battlecry ringing in our ears, we jumped into the encounter. Bites going well, first air phase completed. A raider down, picked up by a timely battle-rez. Bite sequence continues, dps is ramping up. Second air phase completed. Under a minute left; dps is rocking, no more raiders to bite. Heroism popped (without the call, I might add!), it's going to be close. The plaintive cry of "healers get your dps on her!" is heard. We hit the 5 minute mark, and she enrages. The raid is quickly going down but at 5:03, she meets her inevitable end. Another battle won by the skin of our teeth - Go TDC!

We learned a lot from this fight, including our need to continue to improve raid execution. Let's keep our focus on constant improvement folks, and it's on to Val!