Two nights ago, I got a chance to go into Black Temple for the very first time, and witnessed my first raid with my new guild.
I went in even though I was undergeared compared to the rest, and brought my new Shadow Resist set with me. When it came time to use it, I was told to keep my regular healing pants on, instead of wearing the Shadow Resist ones - so in the end, my healing when buffed was around +1550. (Normally when I’m buffed, it’s over 2000)
Since this was Raid Night #2 on a 3-night raiding schedule, Black Temple had already been raided the night before and therefore the first few bosses were down.
We headed straight to the Shadow Resist set-requiring boss, Mother Shahraz, twisting and turning through a huge and confusing complex.
First Attempts On Mother Shahraz
I learned a lot of things about this fight by going through it first-hand.
But when I look back, I see that I learned one major thing: How to improve my rate of survival during the most challenging part of the fight for someone new to it: The part of the raid where 3 of us are teleported to the same spot and are hit with a Shadow debuff that will kill us if we don’t run away from each other quickly.
You see, the concept of running away quickly from one another doesn’t seem like a big problem - just plan that one person will run right, one will run left, and one will run straight, right?
Unfortunately, you have no idea who is going to be chosen for teleportation, so it’s hard to make that plan. And, the first time it happened to me, I ran the wrong way, and with the Shadow Debuff stuff around me I couldn’t see I was following a teammate closely. I killed us both.
While I laid dead, I realized I had my minimap zoomed way out, and that’s why it was hard to use the minimap to determine which way to run. I zoomed it way in, and hoped for an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to learn to survive LONGER.
Maybe I shouldn’t have hoped for the opportunity - the raid got Mother to 1% before wiping.
At any rate, I got a second chance to try the fight.
The second time the Deadly Embrace happened, I got a shield up, and a renew on myself, and with my new positioning of my minimap zoom level, I was able to run in a direction my counterparts weren’t, and I survived!
Buuut, the second time I got Deadly Embraced, I wasn’t able to get a heal on myself quickly enough and I died. But I lived about three times longer than the first attempt ;)
I learned that I need to shield myself, cast Prayer of Mending on myself, eat a healthstone, and cast a renew, all while deciding where to stay put (if the other 2 are running) or what direction to run if others are staying put. Phew. We’ll see how that goes.
Facing The Illidari Council
I had no real idea what to expect when I came into this fight, despite having read about it beforehand.
I was confused about whether it was one of those with different bosses each time, like Opera, or if it was a lineup of guys to down, like Moroes. (pardon my noobish comparisons of Black Temple to Karazhan)
Turns out it was more like Moroes, with a whole whack of guys who needed controlling or tanking in some type of way.
Truth be told, I didn’t live wonderfully long in this fight, either. I tried to find the Deadly Boss Mods notification about how long I lived, but with all of the raid spam for notifications, it zoomed off of my history too fast. One of my goals in raids is to always live longer, so I’ll have to get that figured out ;)
The part of the fight I did survive had a lot of movement, following a tank who was kiting a mob in a flat elliptical orbit around part of the room. I’m not sure if *I* was supposed to be moving that much, but I was… and at one point I trapped myself against a wall when the tank came kiting through, and died there.
Newbie Healer Pulled, Replaced By Veteran
I only got one chance at the Illidari Council fight this time - I guess there were some troubles so they let me see the fight, let me see how I’d do (and probably scoped me out a bit) and then put me into the overflow raid group and asked me to step out so that one of the guild officers could come in to heal the fight.
No problem :) I stepped outside and more or less AFK’d outside of the dungeon, talking to friends and working on a second computer in my office - one that I’m preparing for Dad as a replacement for his 5-year-old PC with itty-bitty monitor.
Whenever there was a Ready Check, I hit “OK”, so folks new that I was there and paying some kind of attention even though I was no longer in the active raid.
Final Results
The final results of this first raid were pretty much exactly what is to be expected of someone with the gearing and experience level I had, going in.
Out of 9 healers, I was #9 in terms of total amount healed, but I wasn’t a huge amount behind #8.
When looking at the Heals per second numbers, I was #7 with just under 550 heals per second calculated. (In heroics I can belt out just over 900 heals per second, as a reference)
I lived longer each time, and think I demonstrated that I am smart enough to “get out of the fire”, whether that fire is a blizzard, rain of fire, hole in the floor, or whatever.
I haven’t really talked to the Officer Team about my performance while I was there, but I got the indication from the Officer who relieved me of healing duties that I’d get more experience in the future, and with experience would come improvements, so I took that as a good sign.
What a great night!
PS: No Tier 6 tokens dropped for Priest this time :)
