We Are Not A Committee

(Bonus points if you get the reference from the title)

Our merry band returned to the Black Temple last night.

The evening started by distrubuting Shadow Resist gear to our new Raiders because we were going to face down Mother Sharaz.

Mother's trash is some of my favorite in Black Temple. There are a bunch of AoE groups which are fun for a Protection Paladin. Be careful if you tank them, because much like how the birds in A'lar's trash can shut you down with their silence, these mobs have an annoying stun. The good news is you don't loose aggro when they stun you, but it can frustrating trying to get off your next Consecrate and unable to do so.

We've only killed Mother one time, and that was a couple of weeks ago. Several people in our Raid had not seen the fight yet. It took a couple of pulls for everyone to really understand the fight and get the movement down.

Offtanking Mother is not the most exciting job in Black Temple. It's more of a soak job than a tank job. I started out trying to throw some heals, but Mother has a long silence that makes it challenging to get heals out. So I ended up keeping Judgement of Wisdom up for the casters, and 'DPSing' with Consecrate, Seal of Vengeance and Exorcism in between siliences.

We had one of those agonizing 1% wipes where you hope that last tick of Shadow Word Pain will finally kill the Boss, but then we ended up tethering her and she reset. After that, we were more determined than ever to get her, and we killed her on the very next pull.

Both of our Warrior tanks napped Tier 6 as did my old buddy Aga. Mother did not drop the Libram, but some clothy pants that made our Mages and Warlocks happy.

With Mother down, we started to work our way to Illidari Council.

One of the reasons I like to raid is to see more of the game than I had previously. Part of this, I'm sure comes from the fact that WoW is my first MMO. In all my other computer gaming experience, the goal was always to 'win', to beat the game. You really can't 'win' World of Warcraft. You don't ever really 'beat' the game. So I've set a rather arbitrary benchmark for myself, Illidan. When we kill Illidan, I will consider to myself that I have 'beat' the game of Burning Crusade.

Illidari Council's trash isn't too bad. You get a single pull of a Robot which is like the Tempest Keep Robots on steriods. He picks one person and winds up this big blast of doom. It's up to the healers to Power Word Shield and heal the person quickly. It took us a couple of pulls to defeat these guys without losing anyone.

The other trash is a coupe of packs of Mages, Paladins and Rogues. I was usually assigned to tank one of the Battlelords (Paladin type). They actually use Divine Shield aka The Bubble when they got low, and it can be Mass Dispelled.

I had to chuckle when someone in the raid mentioned "Well at least he didn't hearth".

After a short bit of trash we found ourselves face to face with Illidari Council.

This is another multimob boss like Moroes, High King Maulgar, Fathom Lord Karathress, or Hex Lord. Much like those encounters, the first hurdle to master is the pull. Council consists of a Paladin (Garithos), a Mage (High Nethermancer Zerevor), a Priest (Lady Malande), and a Rogue (Veras Darkshadow). Most of them appeared to be decked out in full Tier 6, or at least the Paladin was. I'm not really familiar with other classes Tier set graphics. I guess High Nethermancer is the next step from High Astromancer like Solarian on Tempest Keep.

The initial strategy we tried was to have your humble author run in and bubble, then Blessing of Protection Kho, who was our Mage tank, then click off my bubble, and grab Veras Darkshadow.

That didn't work so great. One of the reasons I prepare myself so diligently outside of game is make up for some of my ingame deficiancies. See, I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm not that good of player. I don't have those lightning quick reflexes I had 10 years ago when I was playing Quake and X-Wing Versus Tie Fighter.

I managed to run in and bubble. I know I got the Blessing of Protection off on Kho because it went on cooldown, but by that point Veras was freely destorying my raid.

We tried again. This time I was to run in and grab Veras while the other tanks were Misdirected and the Mage Tank grabbed Zerevor. So I ran and SPLAT! Dead Hammer. It turns out I was still supposed to bubble myself.

So we try something different. Another Paladin put Blessing of Protection on Kho (Mage Tank), and I had Veras Misdirected to me. That pull went much smoother.

Veras, being a Roguey type, will from time to time, do a Moroes like Vanish. While he's vanished, he goes around and puts poison on a couple of people in your raid. It is similar to Garrotte from Moroes and can be removed by Stoneform, but mostly you just have to heal through it.

After a short time he will reappear and needs to be picked up by the tank. I had set up several macros to help me grab Veras. The Avenger's Shield macro flat out would not funciton. My apologies to Arbolito and Estigma who suffered quick deaths while I figured out that it wasn't going to work.

So I went to the Judgement macro. That worked great, but a couple of times it would Judge him before he was fully back and he seemed to ignore the Judgement and run loose. I did not see Blessing of Spell Warding on him.

Usually the first two or three pick ups went well, then I would miss one. I do not believe Veras was ever the cause of a wipe. We were having larger issues with people not moving out of Flame Strikes, and Blizzards, and being hit by Divine Wrath. By my estimate, I'll need at least 10 clean pickups on Veras for our first kill.

Veras only got Blessing of Spell Warding one time and I already had established Aggro so it wasn't an issue. I was actually using my Sun Eater on this fight so I would have more aggro when he got Blessing of Spell Warding.

Next time we face them, I am only going to do a Target macro. I will fire off my Judgment, Taunt, or Avenger's Shield manually.

It was really cool to see a new encounter. I have every confidence we will defeat it.