The short, spoiler version is: 2 bosses down in 1.5hrs, 0 wipes.
Sol lead us into ZG again last night. The plan was to attempt Venoxis (Snake boss) and the bat boss. When we got there HLS had about 13 ready to go. We recruited the rest from HAWC and even had Shebus from Skunk Canyon Brigade. Somehow we ended up with 5 mages and I think 3 rogues. Add a warlock tossing Curse of Elements and the damage output was just plain sick.
Clearing the courtyard for the bat was a little more expensive than it had to be. I think some people were so focused on the fight they didn't notice the emote that the bat was going to explode. We had a fair number of deaths because people were too close. Nothing serious though -- just a repair bill.
The bat lady herself was pretty easily handled. The tanks did a good job keeping her between the two DPS groups. I don't think she got a heal off nor did she summon the bomber bats. If I remember correctly only two people died on that fight.
Venoxis was a little tougher. Some of the DPS started in him after killing only 3 of his snake guards - leaving the last one to be taken a little more slowly. We beat him down to snake form. I think Blizzard might have changed him a little -- Sol seemed to have a hard time moving him around the bonfire after he morphed and I saw the melee group lose people to the poison cloud really fast. Sol went down and Venoxis charged into the casters. Not only was he whacking on us he dropped his cloud right in our midst. The 300dmg per tick cuts through my HP pretty quick. By the time I was out of it and the effect wore off I was at about 200hp. Venoxis then looked at me crossed-eyed and I keeled over dead. In the end a little less than half the raid was dead but Venoxis was vanquished. Woot!
At this point we had about 45 minutes before people needed to start logging. We decided to go farm for coins and bijous. The route we took led up to the Bloodlord.
Again we had one fight that was harder than it had to be. The 4-blood drinkers have to be CC'd and taken out with ranged dps one at a time. They have this AE blood splatter that does 300 dmg to everyone in range AND heals the drinker. The more people in range of the AE, the bigger the heal on the mob. The only melee on a drinker should be the MT and MA. Everyone else is at range with spells, bows, or guns. If one of the CC targets breaks the melee can't try to pick it up and off-tank it -- they HAVE to be re-CC'd until the MT breaks it.
We had tons of CC -- 5 mages and 2 druids. That part was pretty well done. The mages seemed to be the worst culprits in breaking CC, though. Once I accidentally fireballed my own sheep -- not only did it break it, it left a DoT in so I couldn't re-sheep. Grrr! I saw Cone of Cold and Frost Nova break sheep a couple of times as well. When we have that many mobs CC'd and the sheep are wandering all over the place we need to stick to direct target spells instead of AE -- even if we are in trouble personally.
The only other area that caused us some trouble early on was the DPS opening up on the mobs too quickly. This got better as the run went on and by the end it didn't seem to be a problem. Either that or the tanks just got suddenly better at keep agg in the face of 10,000,000dps. ;)
The loot was pretty good. We got the Purple quest items off the two bosses. Several lock boxes dropped. A really nice +dmg ring dropped off the bat boss. Some decents greens and boat load of coins fell. No bijous, however. Duerdon won the roll to loot the HooDoo pile but we didn't get to kill him -- bummer -- my night was ruined! ;)
It was a very good run. For the most part the encounters were handled expertly. There were a couple of intense fights, but hey, they add spice to the run and prevent boredom from setting in! GG all that went -- I'll raid with you any day!
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