-
Social Media
-
Moving
I’ve been preoccupied lately getting ready to move.
My company is being relocated to the Muscle Shoals/Florence Alabama area at the end of the month. Unfortunately, not everyone who works there new it. Because most of them were being let go.
There were about a dozen of us that had been quietly invited to relocate with the company. We’ve been having after-hours meetings for weeks discussing the move and many other details about our company. Who else do we want to invite along, who should we definitely boot, how should we better handle situations that haven’t been handled so well in the past.
See, the company I work for hadn’t been doing so well. Mostly due to problems with the leadership (read: greedy, unscrupulous owner with terrible business sense and shady business partners). So a consultant was brought in to see if we could get pointed in the right direction. After about 8 months, that consultant ended up buying the company - at a bargain price no doubt.
Among the first steps in the long term plan is to purge about 75% of the employees and relocate. The previous owner loved to throw bodies at problems whenever they popped up, so we were severely overstaffed. Most of the layoffs are already done (there were a handful who were asked to stay until we move) and we are down to about 40% of the staff we used to have. And all of the work is still getting done.
So that is the main reason for the lack of action here. I have been busy tieing up all the loose ends here in Florida and making weekend trips to Alabama to find a place to live. Secretly.
I payed my deposit and signed a lease on a townhouse last weekend. I’m going to start packing and disassembling everything this weekend. I may make a quick trip next weekend to score the key to my new place and get the utilities turned on.
In the mean time, we did manage to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress. We had just killed Leo (with only 22 people in the raid to boot) and since we had never bothered to even go look at Fathom-Lord or discuss strategy before, the guild leader wanted to call it an early night.
I convinced everyone to carry on for the few more trash pulls it takes to get to Fathom-Lord (well, most everyone wanted to do it anyway, I just had to convince some of the other officers that we would be fine). The other officers and I briefly go over the strat in O chat and we give it the old dry run. Kill order is Hunter, Shaman, Priest, Karathress. When the hunter summons his pet it immediately gets away from the hunter tank and choas ensues.
“No big deal. It was a dry run. You all see how it works though? Ok, lets do it one more time.”
Frayed Tether of the Drowned
Leggings of the Vanquished Champion
Leggings of the Vanquished Champion
Leggings of the Vanquished Defender
Tags: Fathom-Lord Karathress, Leotheras the Blind, Progression, Real Life, Serpentshrine Cavern
An amazing week for The Asylum
It’s been an awesome week for the asylum. In the span of seven days we have taken down three new bosses.
It started last Tuesday when we did our now typical ‘kill Gruul, then go kill Magtheridon, then do some Hyjal trash’ run. That day ended with us actually killing Rage Winterchill.
Bracers of the Pathfinder
Stillwater Boots
Thursday was the usual ‘kill Lurker then head for Leo’ night and ended with Leo dead for the second time. We went back to SSC on Sunday and floored Morogrim Tidewalker for the first time on the second attempt.
Girdle of the Tidal Call
Mantle of the Tireless Tracker
Talon of Azshara
Our main Paladin tank (to whom our plate nature resist set is soulbound) and our main Warrior tank were both online. So the Warrior grabbed the unused frost resist set from the guild bank and equipped it all and we tried Hydross.
Unfortunately we had quite the issue with Hydross gunning down DPS classes on the phase switches. I think our best attempt was somewhere right above 40%.
Last night we decided to have a stab at Hydross again, but our Warrior with the frost resist set was not able to raid so I had to try and tank the frost form. Having a grand total of 70 frost resist, I ended up taking repeated 12k hits by the time Hydross’ debuff was stacked to 100%. Time to move on to something else.
With no clear strategy having been discussed for Fathom-Lord Karathress or Lady Vashj, we decide it’s best if we just go to Tempest Keep and have a go at Void Reaver.
We went with a simple strategy. Everyone except for 2 hunters piles up under Void Reaver’s feet. The two hunters will kite the Arcane Orbs. Two tanks fight for aggro and everyone else just blasts away. Four tanks is recommended, but we only had 2 viable tanks in the raid.
I think we had a good number of people who didn’t quite understand that when Void Reaver knocks a tank back, they drop about 10-20% of their threat on him. We had two failed attempts due to DPS classes getting destroyed after Knock Away, but I was able to walk him to the door and reset the event without it being a total wipe.
On the winning try, what I did was call out for all DPS to stop when the Paladin tank got hit with Knock Away to give him time to get up to #2 on the threat list. That way when I took a Knock Away, he would be the #1 threat target and not 5 or 6 of our DPSers.
We cut it close though. At about 15% I got knocked away while the Paladin tank was still #4 on threat. At that point Void Reaver moved to pick up his #1 threat target, a DPSer. The key to our strategy was having Void Reaver stay in one spot for the entire encounter. If everyone is in melee range they won’t get targeted by Arcane Orbs (hence the two hunters kiting them from range).
When Void Reaver adjusted his position to destroy that DPSer, suddenly we had a bunch of people out of melee range. We took at least one Arcane Orb and lost about 10 people, but our healers stepped up and kept enough people alive to beat the enrage timer by 5 seconds!
Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender
Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender
Pauldrons of the Fallen Hero
Girdle of Zaetar
It might have gone smoother with another Druid or a Warrior tanking, since it’s easier for those two classes to gain threat than it is for a Paladin. Sometimes you have to just make due with what you got though.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I finally got my Wildfury Greatstaff from the trash about three pulls before Leotheras when we killed him on Thursday.
Tags: Hyjal Summit, Morogrim Tidewalker, Progression, Rage Winterchill, Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye, Void Reaver
Leotheras the Blind Down
On our third time clearing to and attempting Leotheras, he has finally been relieved.
We’ve been to see him twice before and gave him a few shots both times with no luck. One of those was a 6% wipe. Last night we made our way there and got his loots on our first shot.
Gloves of the Vanquished Defender
Gloves of the Vanquished Defender
Gloves of the Vanquished Hero
Coral-Barbed Shoulderpads
Pattern: Hurricane Boots
I was lucky enough to receive one of the T5 glove tokens.
After that we swung over to say hello to Morogrim Tidewalker. Most of us had never seen him before and very few had done any reading about him. Nevertheless there was a quick explanation, I was going to main tank him while two paladins picked up the Murlocs. We only had time for one shot and although we didn’t kill him I feel we did pretty well, getting him to 52%.
Tags: Leotheras the Blind, Morogrim Tidewalker, Serpentshrine Cavern
We really get around
On Friday night I crafted myself a pair of Boots of Natural Grace (bought the pattern on the auction house). I also crafted the Primalstrike Vest and Primalstrike Bracers for my Kitty set. Immediately after crafting my Primalstrike stuff I went on a Heroic Black Morass run for the daily and guess what? I had enough badges for the Band of the Swift Paw. I had intended for them to replace my Umberhowl’s Collar for my tanking set, but they also replaced the Primalstrike Bracers from my DPS set. What an incredible waste of 3 Primal Mights.
With some of my new gear I’ve lost a considerable amount of defense rating and resilience. I’ve had to supplement it with enchants here and there to keep myself uncrittable. I’m currently rolling with Enchant Chest - Major Resiliance and Vindicator’s Armor Kit on my gloves and boots to keep myself over the limit.
Ok on to the raid details.
As much as the majority of folks in my guild would love to stop running a weekly Karazhan raid and focus more on 25-man content, it’s just not practical right now. There are too many people (myself included) who still need gear from there. Not to mention the 22 Badges of Justice you get for a full clear.
I’m 3/5 for T4 now, but only one of those is an item that I will continue to use for any length of time (the Mantle of Malorne), and I still need the helm from Prince. Megalis has seen that dude die about seven times now and still no helm.
And speaking of badges, I need to save up 100 of them for Embrace of Everlasting Prowess which makes the T4 chest obsolete. Not that I have the T4 chest. I’m still rocking the Heavy Clefthoof Vest. That chest piece, plus a ring, a cloak, an optional necklace and some other odds and ends add up to quite a few badges that I still need. And 3-5 badges here and there from heroics just isn’t going to cut it. I need those weekly Kara runs.
So anyway, the guild ran two Kara raids on Saturday. My raid finished a full clear in about 4.5 hours. Not quite as quickly as the raid a couple weeks ago (3.5 hours) but we had several people on the bench that had to get swapped in and out as well as two or three wipes. I sat out for Chess and Opera. The Curator finally coughed up his damn gloves for me. Still no staff from Illhoof, helm from Prince or tank ring from Shade. The gloves do make me happy though. I was using one of those crappy PvP pieces you can buy at honored rep with all the outlands factions.
Sunday was a quick clear of Gruul’s and then over to SSC. Gruul dropped the Aldori Legacy Defender for the main Warrior and he had it gemmed and enchanted before we even got to SSC.
SSC was really fun. Lurker went down first try. As usual the new people were dead almost right away. Remembering that Lurker whirls after each spout as well as on a regularly scheduled basis is key and I see a lot of people who either don’t care about it or forget about it standing right up next to Lurker pounding away on him as he whirls.
We headed straight for Leotheras after that. We had one wipe on the two bog giants. It was supposed to be one, then the other but while we were fighting the first one the second one was aggroed.
Then there were the two trash pulls just outside of Leo’s chamber. We planned on sapping one but something went wrong and the Rogue was spotted. That would have been fine but someone pulled the other trash right next to the group we were fighting and it went downhill quickly. I didn’t stick around to even try and salvage it. I ran back up the ramp and jumped down to the previous level. The mobs had to run a long ways around to try and catch me and they gave up before that happened. One of the priests got bubbled so it wasn’t a full wipe and we were back in action a couple minutes later.
Once inside Leo’s chamber there are five or six more trash pulls before him. Incredibly, we had the Boots of Unending Courage drop on two of these trash pulls. Still no greatstaff for this Druid :(
The rest of the trash before Leo was cleared and we were ready. The fight was laid out for those that hadn’t researched it or done it before. Our Warlock put on his fire resist set to tank Leo’s demon form. Myself and a Paladin were chosen to tank the human form.
We lost a huge portion of our DPS on the first whirlwind, but I think some of them got a better idea of how to avoid it next time. The human form tanking part is rather easy. I just have to grab aggro before anyone else does, then let the Paladin take the aggro from me. If I get a demon summoned on me I can kill it very easily and get back to swatting at Leo.
We only had enough time for the one try, but we gained some insight into the fight that just can’t be gained from reading about it or watching videos of it. Next time we’ll give ourselves a better window and have time for several shots at Leo. Hopefully we won’t need them all though.
Three different raids this weekend. I had a great time and I think everyone else did too. Making that progress at the end was super nice too. We’ve killed Lurker several times now and we always just left after that. I’m glad we were finally able to press on.
Tags: Gruul's Lair, Karazhan, Leatherworking, Leotheras the Blind, Primalstrike, Serpentshrine Cavern
Leotheras is officially on notice
Sunday’s raid was delayed until Monday (last night) due to Mother’s Day.
That ended up being another trip to Lurker and no Wildfury Greatstaff for me. Our top Warlock has devoted an enormous amount of time and effort to creating a fire resist kit to off-tank the Leotheras fight. Over the weekend he finally reached the point of being ready to attempt it. Unfortunately his mother ended up in the hospital and he was not able to play. I haven’t heard the details of why she was hospitalized but I do very much hope that she is ok. A human being’s health is much more important than a game and I think the entire guild shares that sentiment. We will have our shot at Leo soon enough.
Lurker went down without much of a fight save for one warm-up wipe. My stupid ass got hit with the first spout on our second try so I spent the entire battle drifting in the water just slightly out of range of battle rez. Our tree druid disconnected while underwater and got scalded to death before he could log back in. Nevertheless, Lurker was killed without the two of us. The fight actually went really well considering I was a Guardian tank and the main tank had to pick up my Guardian then jump back to Lurker afterwards. Lurker dropped another Cord of Screaming Terrors, a Mallet of the Tides and the Ancestral Ring of Conquest.
Our main Warrior tank was all over the mallet and I don’t recall who took the belt because I was too busy comparing the ring to to my own. I had no doubt that the ring was an upgrade for me, but I wanted to know how much of an upgrade. I ended up taking it to replace Delicate Eternium Ring from my tanking set and Averinn’s Ring of Slaying (correction: it was the Band of Ursol that got replaced. I’m still wearing the other one) from my DPS set. I’m kinda being stingy with my EP/GP ratio right now as I am up against a warrior and a priest for the T4 tokens that still haven’t dropped. Those being gloves, helmet and chest.
And speaking of the T4 chest, after Lurker was down we ported back to Shat for repairs, restock, etc. and regrouped at Magtheridon’s Lair. We ended the raid at 11pm (cst) after four wipes. Each wipe was due to either early or late cube clickers which results in a Blast Nova. On our last attempt we made it to phase three (30%) just as the Blast Nova took most of us out. We still got him down to 28% before everyone was dead though.
It was a learning experience for many of us since we hadn’t been there before. The guild itself has attempted Mag before but that was long before myself and many other people that are raiding with us now had even joined.
Wednesday - if enough people show up - we are planning on paying a visit to Leotheras. Leo doesn’t have much of a loot table (mostly crafting patterns), but he does have T5 gloves (Nordrassil Handgrips for me specifically) and that’s nothing to complain about.
Tags: Leotheras the Blind, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavern, The Lurker Below
T4 loots for me and a T5 boss down
On Saturday my raid group got back together and finished the remaining three bosses in Karazhan; Nightbane, Illhoof and Netherspite.
I got a Gilded Thorium Cloak from Illhoof, my first piece of real raid loot with my guild, The Asylum. My new cloak is only surpassed in bear-tank goodness by two other cloaks in the game according to Emmerald’s feral tanking gear list.
On Sunday we strolled on into Gruul’s lair and knocked some faces in the dirt and I picked up the Mantle of Malorne from High King Maulgar. These are also pretty high on Emmerald’s list, only surpassed by the T5 and T6 shoulders, two PvP shoulders and an upgraded Sunwell drop (Shoulderpads of Vehemence + Sunmote = Demontooth Shoulderpads).
After Gruul was down we regrouped at Coilfang Reservoir and had another stab at The Lurker Below. We had given him a shot last weekend but couldn’t make it happen.
This time we gave it three tries before we had to call it. On our second try we got Lurker down to 2% but we had too many dead folks to make it through the Naga phase.
After our third attempt we did a ready check to see if we’d have enough people to make Monday an official raid night for this week and give it another shot. We had enough, so it was settled: be here and ready to go on Monday night for another go at Lurker.
After two full nights of failures on Lurker, Vishyna and I started looking up as much information as we could about the encounter to help mitigate any errors that had occurred or might occur.
Here are some important facts we found:
- If you use any consumable whatsoever while the Naga are swimming into position, they will immediately aggro you, teleport to your position, and kill you.
- The three Guardians that spawn have a really nasty frontal cleave attack which hits cloth for 8-9k.
- If Lurker doesn’t have anyone in melee range he will start hitting random players with Water Bolt, a 10k attack.
- If you repeatedly jump up and down in the scalding water, each jump refreshes the damage tick making it 500 damage every 1 second rather than every 3 seconds. If you’re in the water, just sit there. An average HoT will be enough to keep you at full health.
On Monday, we made sure that the entire raid understood these things along with what we had already learned, and then we had at him. We had a couple people who hadn’t been in on the previous attempts and we lost them early during our first two tries. After those two tries though, everyone seemed to finally get it.
On our third try we only ended up with four or five dead players and Lurker went down quite easily in just over 10 minutes. Grats to the Asylum for now being 1/6 in SSC.
After three full nights of trying to kill The Lurker Below it has become apparent to me that he is not actually a difficult boss. He is a test of attention span. Each individual in the raid must stay focused the entire time. There is a lot going on in this encounter and you can’t just sit back and repeatedly fire off your favorite spell or ranged attack while occasionally moving out of the way of a cave-in or black hole.
If everyone pays attention and survives, which is very easy to do, then The Lurker Below will be happy to cough up his T5 loots for you.
Tags: Gruul's Lair, Illhoof, Karazhan, Serpentshrine Cavern, The Lurker Below
As predicted in my last post, Vishyna and I were level 69 when we logged out Friday night. Saturday we logged in and got right to questing in Netherstorm. We hit 70 that afternoon. As soon as we hit 70 we ported down to Azeroth, trained our new abilities, crafted some new 70 gear and strapped on some other gear we had waiting for us.
I had several Solid Star of Elune cut and a Delicate Eternium Ring made for me (thanks Dereyn). I made my Heavy Clefthoof Leggings and Heavy Clefthoof Vest (I had already bought the boots from the auction house). I ran around to various quartermasters and bought some of the new PvP gear that is now available when you are honored with the respective factions.
As Vishyna and I were finishing up getting our new 70 gear all sorted and checking out our new stats, the call went out to drop groups - raid invites were going out.
Somehow her and I ended up in a Kara raid that was already cleared up to Shade. Yeah I know, the T4 gloves token drops from Curator, but our guild uses EPGP for it’s loot protocol and this being my first raid with them I wasn’t eligible for loot unless it went unclaimed (and there was another feral as well as a tree Druid in this particular raid). So I’m kinda glad Curator was already down. I would have been very unhappy if that T4 token dropped and I couldn’t have it.
Which brings me to Illhoof. We handily downed him and what should drop? Yep, the Stranglestaff. And the other feral - who a) asked me “how did you get +10 stam on all your gear” and b) already has the Greatstaff from SSC - snatches it up. Sigh.
Anyway, we finished a full clear of Kara with only two wipes on Netherspite (first because nobody got the green beam in time and Netherspite was healed back to full and second because someone stepped into the red beam before I could and got aggro). We had a Paladin main-tank and I was swapping between off-tank and DPS and occasionally main-tanking bosses. I didn’t get any loot and I had to sit out for Prince, but I walked away with 10 badges and I was 300 or so EP closer to being able to take loot.
Sunday me and Vish got down to starting some dailies with Recstrech. We did all sorts of Sha’tari Skyguard stuff including half of the new and improved Adversarial Blood (old version) and achieved friendly status with those folks. I was 5999/6000 with Sha’tar from turning in all of my signets and tomes so we went and finally killed Levixus for Levixus the Soul Caller which put me over into honored with them.
We farmed some netherweb spider silk for Vish. Did a few quests. Did the cooking daily which took us to Blade’s Edge to cook something over the corpse of an Abyssal Flamebringer.
Raid time rolled around and SSC was on the schedule. Vish and I assumed we wouldn’t be attending since we are in basic blues and greens (having not done any instances aside from Shadow Labs to get the first key fragment for the Kara attunement quest chain).
It was looking like they wouldn’t have enough people for a 25-man so we started looking for folks to help us with the Ogri’la prereq 5-mans. We tried to 3-man Grulloc with Rec and although we did quite well it wasn’t enough. Right then we were told to drop our group for a raid invite. WTF? We are nowhere near geared enough to do SSC. Nonetheless we are invited and end up getting drug along into SSC since we will be number 24 and 25 for the raid.
The Greatstaff drops on the first trash pull and our main bear tank takes it. After a few more trash pulls I’m told to get into my tank gear so I can take some of the pressure off of the other tanks. I tank my assigned mob just fine for a few trash pulls. We sneak past Hydross for a few more trash pulls. Pattern: Boots of Utter Darkness drops and nobody else can use it so I take it. Then I fall into the water. Along with about 7 other people. There’s a little gap up there you have to watch out for. I shifted into Aquatic Form and made it for dry land as quick as I could but those damn fish are nasty. I actually made it to where the Lurker fight takes place and got up onto the ring but I died as soon as I got out of the water. Those who died in the water have to run back but I am able to be resurrected.
So we finally make it to Lurker and give it about 5 tries before it’s too late and people have to start logging. Lurker is a really tough fight for anyone, let alone someone in blues and greens. For the first few tries I was in DPS gear and assigned a platform along with a Rogue to take out the Naga that swim up. We were having trouble with the guardians that spawn wiping out the healers and ranged DPS though. So I went bear tank for the last two tries to help soak up those guardians. On the first try I got spouted off into the distance as I wasn’t quite far enough under the water. On the second try the guardian owned me. Then the trash started respawning and people started logging off so it was time to call it.
Another 300+ EP closer to taking loot. I’m just short of 700 EP and the guild requires you to have 1,000 EP to become a full member and take loot. By the time the next raid is over I should be over that or very close to it.
Tags: Karazhan, Netherspite, Serpentshrine Cavern, Sha'tar, Sha'tari Skyguard, The Lurker Below