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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.

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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:

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.

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Whirlwind Weekend

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Megalis | 1 Comment

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.

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