Karazhan Group With New Members
Tonight I ran Kruenor with an Apex of War Karazhan group. This was a new composition, with Muttonchops (protection Warrior) and Licserra (feral Druid) tanking…Ahonor (protection Paladin) was in reserve as well, to practice AoE tanking pulls and off-tanking as needed. Healing be Romtz (holy Priest), Restalaan (holy Paladin), and Grantaar (restoration Shaman). The DPS team included Kruenor (marksmanship Hunter), Flynti (beast mastery Hunter), Darkmaidenn (warlock), and Minnieme (mage).
Clearing towards Attumen, I found that I had to throttle DPS quite a bit, often times doing nothing. Muttonchops threat per second seems a bit low…I’m not if it’s because if his technique or because of the gear divide. In any event, the clear to Attumen was nearly flawless…only one death along the way. The Attumen pull was good, I misdirected to the Warrior to help ensure he kept Attumen to himself.
We dropped Attumen in 4 minutes, 11 seconds with no deaths. I spent some time auto-shotting. Attumen dropped the Bracers of the White Stag (disenchanted) and the Spectral Band of Innervation (greeded by Romtz for offset).
Clearing towards Moroes wasn’t bad, and it shouldn’t have been. The paladin tank had plenty of opportunities to throw down his Consecration and protect the AoE casters…against single targets he was doing about 200 TPS, which is pretty damn low. Nevertheless, we had a few mage deaths and a warlock death during AoE pulls.
The Moroes adds included Baroness Dorothea Millstipe, Lord Robin Daris, Lady Keira Berrybuck, and Lord Crispin Ference. The plan was to shackle Lord Robin Daris. Ahonor would tank Berrybuck and Crispin, while DPS burned down Millstipe with the beast master’s pet tanking. The plan worked perfectly. Moroes was dropped in 3 minutes, 23 seconds (with no deaths). He dropped Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch (won by Ahonor) and the Belt of Gale Force (disenchanted).
Right before the final pull to the staircase leading out of the ballroom, I saw an Avenger Shield go awry and the group of elites were pulled. I called for a Consecrate and heal the Paladin over Vent, and everyone made a nice recovery on the fight. Only the Shaman died.
The Guest Chambers pulls were a little sloppy, but we managed them without issue. The Maiden of Virtue dropped in 2 minutes, 18 seconds. Perfect fight, no deaths. The Maiden of Virtue dropped the Bands of Indwelling (disenchanted) and the Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden (greeded by Muttonchops).
We drew Big Bad Wolf for the Opera Event. Big Bad Wolf got a few lucky shots in, and we lost 2 healers and the mage in the opening minute of the fight. A call for dying at the front of the stage was made…so that’s what we did. We wiped in 2 minutes, which is pretty long…we just didn’t have the DPS to finish him off.
The second attempt was victorious in 4 minutes, 26 seconds…but it was tough. I died early, and Flynti died twice during the fight. Romtz was stellar, and was able to kite Big Bad Wolf three out of four times…Romtz died right at the very end when Wolf was at 10% health. Big Bad Wolf dropped Red Riding Hood’s Cloak (Grantaar) and Trial-Fire Trousers (Minnieme).
I died on the Broken Stair when I fat-fingered my Feign Death button…I was busy getting into my rotation, went to Feign Death, and then ended up moving as I cast it. In other words, I wasted it.
Clearing trash to Curator went pretty well. Curator dropped in 4 minutes, 57 seconds. No deaths. The Curator dropped Garona’s Signet Ring (Muttonchops) and the Gloves of the Fallen Defender (greeded by Romtz for off-set).
Kruenor Fights Curator Through Illhoof
The continuation of Karazhan by the Apex of War core group was a modestly successful one last Thursday night. We had gotten a late start due to personnel issues on the first night, and I had been pulled in at the last minute because of needed DPS. The same would hold true on this night, and I got a chance to go along again.
The group was able to one-shot the Curator with no deaths. We had our protection Warrior Cidemo on Curator the whole time of course, but he was joined by our Arms warrior Haltaf and our rogue Painne. I’m glad to see the Rogue get a chance to focus on Curator, but wondered how the group would fare downing the Astral Flares without 2 of our DPS members. As it happened, that wouldn’t be a legitimate concern.
We weren’t getting behind on the flares, but he weren’t getting ahead either. At first, the two Hunters pets were supposed to have been on Curator, but I think we both began using them to help control the flares. The Curator was at 50% after the first evocation, and we had him down just after his second evocation completed. Curator was killed in 4 minutes, 15 seconds, and he dropped the Gloves of the Fallen Hero (needed by Kruenor, finally!) and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries (needed by Khalie). Everyone has been waiting for that staff to drop, and it does, on a night where there were no Mages in the group.
We decided to go after the Shade of Aran next, which is the move I agree with. I believe in always gaining access to the shortcut as soon as possible. Unfortunately it would take us two tries to get Shade of Aran down on that night. The first attempt lasted just over three minutes and ended with Shade at 19% health (I died when he was at about 32% health).
On the second attempt at Shade, we dropped him in 4 minutes, 28 seconds. We handled the elementals particularly well during this go…one was banished for the duration of the fight, and two of the other were killed quickly. Romtu and Menohealu were the only casualties. The Shade of Aran dropped the Steelspine Faceguard (needed by Romtu) and the Shermanar Great-Ring (needed by Haltaf for his tanking set).
We retraced our steps to have a crack at Terestian Illhoof. I had to modify my macro a little bit, because they wanted my DPS on either the Demon Chains or Terestian Illhoof (minus Kil’rek), as the case may be. Without a Paladin in the group for Consecration Aura, Warlass was having a tough time spamming Seed of Corruption.
We would wipe twice before getting Illhoof down on the third try. On our victorious attempt, I had a major meltdown with my user interface once again. There was a period of about 30 to 45 seconds where my autoshot icon appeared to be locked up, and I was unable to shoot any shots. As a Hunter, that’s a problem. I was able to swing my pet back and forth to the Demon Chains and Illhoof, and I was also able to lay a Snake Trap down, but that was it. That’s a tough thing to swallow, to just be standing there (and it didn’t escape the notice of others) as the group is calling out the “burn him” signal. By un-equipping my ranged weapon and re-equipping another ranged weapon (as well as the ammo), I was effectively able to “unstick” my autoshot key. I have no idea what this problem is, but it is certainly annoying.
Illhoof dropped in 4 minutes, 54 seconds (our third attempt). He dropped The Lightning Capacitor (greeded by Romtu) and the Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion (disenchanted).
I was hoping we’d clear to the Chess Event, but on this night (a week night), they called the raid…but it was okay, I was pretty tired at that point myself.
Clean Karazhan Run For Kruenor
It’s been a while since my Hunter ran with his guild Apex of War in Karazhan. It might have been three weeks to be exact. Last night’s run went very well…I think there were some scheduling issues (maybe some no-shows). So after getting the proper number of tanks and healers available, I got an invite to join the run.
Clearing through the trash mobs leading Attumen didn’t require any trapping, as we were running with three Priests. So it makes it that much easier…rotating through tank targets is a Hunter’s specialty. Occasionally we’ve been sloppy with point-of-attack and fears causing unintended pulls of nearby mobs. But on this night, these pulls would be clean.
Facing Attumen, we had our DPS warrior Haltaf on Midnight, and our feral Druid Lycana on Attumen. It was a bit of a surprise at first, at least for me. I thought Haltaf would be on Attumen for the Disarm and Spell Reflection (bouncing Attumen’s curse back onto himself), but now I’m trying to remember whether or not DPS Warriors have Disarm…I think it’s a trainable skill for all Warriors. I’ll have to check it now. In any event, a couple of healers went down for some reason, but we had the fight under control. I’m glad to see Apex of War is using the “gather into melee range” strategy for dealing with Attumen when he mounts his horse. This prevents the notorious charging.
We dropped Attumen with one shot in 4 minutes, 36 seconds. Attumen dropped the Steelhawk Crossbow (needed by Roguejustice) and the Gloves of Saintly Blessings (needed by Katare).
Clearing the trash to Moroes was very well done. I don’t think we had any deaths of the AoE pulls…Lycana did a great job of picking of the phantoms who were attacking healers or our Warlock. For these pulls I like to enable my Ravager’s Growl ability, and then I enjoy the challenge of remembering it to disable Growl for the single elite pulls. I made the mistake of forgetting to disable Growl exactly twice last night.
The Moroes fight ended up well, although it started poorly. We had three shackles available, and the idea was to shackle three of the adds. The first target in the DPS rotation would be triangle, which was to be tanked initially by Romtu’s pet. The yellow star would be next in the DPS rotation, and I was to misdirect it to my pet as the first target was brought down. Well…star didn’t get shackled right away, and at least half of the DPS was fighting it. The other half was fighting green triangle. I was going all out on green triangle, as we must normally do, in order to quickly dispatch the first couple of mobs. I ended up hunter-tanking the green triangle for about 15 seconds, and ended up being killed in the opening 20 seconds of the fight. Not good. Yellow star was finally shackled, and DPS was focusing on green triangle.
Khalie gave me a quick battle rez and I rejoined the fight. Luckily my pet was still alive, so I just had to whistle him back. I totally forgot to use Trueshot Aura and Aspect of the Viper to help out myself and the group…I used a mana potion to get some mana back to help with keeping some of the shackles ice trapped.
We lost Katare in the fight as well, and I believe Lycana shifted forms to give our healer a battle rez. Luckily we had a couple of Druids in the group that night. We ended up one-shotting Moroes in 4 minutes, 20 seconds. Moroes dropped the Royal Cloak of Arathi Kings (disenchanted) and the Nethershard Girdle (disenchanted).
As we cleared trash towards the Maiden of Virtue, one of the trash mobs dropped the Ring of Unrelenting Storms (disenchanted). I swear this is the fourth straight run of Karazhan that ring has dropped from trash.
Clearing towards the Maiden of Virtue was smooth and without much issue. I should have been faster rotating my pet to the Phantom Hounds…I’d forgotten they would spawn. I had this down by the time we got to the end of the hall. The hounds shouldn’t have been able to hinder anyone (especially the healers), because we had two Hunters in the group able to dispatch pets to the hounds.
The Maiden of Virtue fight went great, and we did not use a Paladin. I confess I should have been paying more attention to what the tank and healers were doing. Now I’m not sure if a healer jumped into the potential AoE zone before Repentance, or if the tank dragged the Maiden to one of the healers during Repentance. I was able to keep Stryker up for the whole fight with a few heals. By the end of the fight, Roguejustice and Khalie were down, and Katare died right in the final seconds of the fight.
We one-shotted the Maiden of Virtue in 2 minutes, 40 seconds. The Maiden of Virtue dropped the Gloves of Centering (disenchanted) and the Boots of Foretelling (needed by Darthyoda). Tullus disconnected right after the fight…apparently he gets disconnected at the same time (roughly 8:39 PM) every night, which is insane. We waited for him to return and continued moving towards the Opera Event.
Dealing with the Skeletal Ushers was pretty sloppy. As Haltaf isn’t able to generate threat as quickly as a true protection Warrior, the goal was for Romtu and I to share misdirect duties to him. Romtu would misdirect the first (in a pair) of Skeletal Ushers to Haltaf to open the fight…and I would misdirect the second of the pair to Haltaf to finish the fight. Roguejustice climbed too quickly on the threat meter and ended up getting clocked by the first Skeletal Usher. These mobs must be handled one at a time, because they encase a top threat target within an Ice Tomb, and would normally rotate their aggro to the other tank. If one of the top two on the threat list isn’t a tank, that person is probably going to be killed.
For the Opera Event, we drew the Wizard of Oz, which I enjoy. This group is very seasoned, as far as winning the event. Darthyoda would be handling the Strawman (the scarecrow), and engulfing him in fire as much as possible. Lycana would be tanking Roar (the cowardly lion), who would be our first DPS target. Haltaf would be kiting Tinhead (the tin man), and I would be to throw in a few Wing Clips early on to help Haltaf out. Dorothy would be ignored until Strawman and Roar were dead…when her dog Tito emerges, we put our Hunter pets on him to make sure he doesn’t silence the casters.
We pretty much executed the fight flawlessly. When the Crone emerged, I finally did NOT receive the pleasure of being caught in the Cyclone. No one died during this fight. We one-shotted the Wizard of Oz in 4 minutes, 50 seconds. The Crone dropped the Beastmaw Pauldrons (needed by Romtu) and the Blue Diamond Witchwand (needed by Menohealu).
I was hoping we’d give Curator a shot, but with the late start on a weeknight, the raid was called there. No matter. I’m sure these guys are going destroy the next few bosses when they pick it up on Thursday night.
Rockstar Takes on Karazhan
Rockstar poses in front of Karazhan. Our team, including 4 completely new members, was able to one-shot all of the bosses through Illhoof on our maiden raid into Karazhan. We also got Shade of Aran down, a good introductory try on Netherspite, and Prince Malchezaar deep into phase 2 numerous times (and even once into phase 3). Rockstar is proud of the group’s efforts so far.
Rockstar and Karazhan Part 4
Monday night’s Karazhan raid was relatively quick to form. Seraphyne and Armandeluz were on board from the beginning, and Radiantys was of course ready to roll when we needed to bring in a third healer. The evening’s goals were to drop as many of the remaining bosses as possible. Only three were left…Netherspite, Prince Malchezaar, and Nightbane. We were trying to decide who to go after first. Trivia decided to leave it up to Amrys, a newcomer to the instance. She decided on Prince.
I was pretty optimistic about Prince, because we had done so well on our previous attempt against him. On our previous run, we had gotten him into phase 2 on the only try we made. This time, the combined mana pool (buffed) of our healers was about 36k, and they were ready to heal.
On the first attempt tonight, we got to phase 2 once more. However, a moment into phase 2, I died and that was it. This was extremely strange to me, as I reviewed the numbers from Grim Reaper and inspected the combat log manually myself. I was hit a few times for a few thousand damage each, sure, and then Seraphyne hit me with a 7500 critical heal. That brought me to 93% of my 15k health. I was then hit for 3700 by Prince, and died. I followed all of the numbers in the combat log, between the flurry of hits, to the critical heal, to the single hit by Prince after that…I was at 50% of my health when I “just died”. I’m thinking this is some type of bug. My threat was way up, there was no way someone had passed me in threat and stuck me with Enfeeblement. There’s nothing really we can do about it, except try again.
On the second attempt, we wiped quickly. Infernals immediately dropped into positions that were not lucky for us, and several of the group died. The good news is we had our first quick-thinking rotation of the tank and the DPS group. It was handled really well.
Subsequent attempts were much better. I felt I was choosing good times to pop Last Stand and Nightmare Seeds during phase 2. It’s hard to feel flurries of damage coming, but I guess that’s all just part of the luck. At times my health bar was topped off. At times I was down to 2000 health and thought for sure I was going to go down. It’s really nerve-wracking seeing that bar, I try not to look at it too much…I’m sure the healers are even more anxious about that bar. On one occasion we were able to enter phase 3 for a short bit…we got Prince down to about 27% on our best attempt.
At this point, we’re able to take Prince Malchezaar into phase 2 pretty consistently (as the DPS group is more and more comfortable with moving into and out of range). We’re able to get Prince into phase 3 at times. We’re getting Prince down to about 30% at times, and the battle is lasting 3 to 4 minutes on solid attempts. I feel very good about our chances next week.
Without any success on Prince, we decided to move to Netherspite and at least give him one shot. This would let the newer people have a chance to see these color beams in action. There are a lot of things to pay attention to in the Netherspite fight, so the more chances you get to see what’s going on, the better.
Trivia led a long pre-fight talk. This was my first chance to handle the red beams (obviously). Predictys and Rockstar would be sharing red beam duty. Now, I’ll be honest here. The tank is supposed to “dance in and out of” the red beam to minimize the debuff. I was strafing left and right for the entire duration of my portal phase, but I seemed to be “in” the red beam at all times. I’m pretty good at moving out of the Void Zones when they open up, but there are others who need to definitely work on that. I also hope everyone is bringing bandages to look after themselves during the banish phase.
We gave the fight a shot. Tanking him from the red beam is pretty fun…though like I said, I didn’t appear to be able to move out of the beam. The portal phase felt really short. We were able to get Netherspite down to about 75% over a couple phases…then miscues picking up the green beam resulted in Netherspite healing himself to full health. And that’s no good. When he regains that much health, we’re very unlikely to down here in the allowed time (the enraging limitation).
When it was all said and done, we lasted a little over 8 minutes and had again brought him down to 75% health. This is pretty good I figure, for a first attempt, including at least 4 raid members who had never seen this fight in action. When we try for Netherspite next week, I’m not sure we’ll beat him, but I think we’ll get him to 50% health or below.
No badges, no loots for us this night…but lots of experience and a good amount of confidence I think.
Rockstar Downs Maiden of Virtue
Rockstar tanks Maiden of Virtue. We one-shotted her with a holy Paladin in the group…when that’s the case, this becomes another one of those fights that’s easy for the tank. Eternal Force Karazhan group 3 keeps rolling.
Rockstar and Karazhan Part 3
Sunday night…and Rockstar is picking up a continuation run of Karazhan this week. Everything through Curator is down. The lineup for tonight includes Illhoof and the Shade of Aran, but hopefully we’d be able to do the Chess Event as well.
This week we brought a Warlock with us. Again we experienced smooth clearing right to Illhoof’s bookcase. We quickly setup for the fight, and I tanked Illhoof right on the edge of the green circle on the floor, with Illhoof’s back to the group. This would maximize the speed with which the melee DPS could turn around and destroy the Demon Chains when needed.
The fight was as usual, a flurry of imps, impressive DPS, great heals, and looked as chaotic as it was fun. This is another one of those easy tanking fights…I get to spam threat moves, throw in a few Thunderclaps to try and get the imps to focus on me for a second…not much difficulty for the main tank. I try to stay on top of the Deadly Boss Mods bars and help announce when things might happen.
We dropped Terestian Illhoof in 4 minutes, 27 seconds. He dropped Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion (disenchanted) and the Lightning Capacitor (needed by Amrys). This was a great start to the evening. Just as with the Maiden of Virtue, we had an experimental attempt with the group at hand, saw how the fight worked, and came back on the next outing with the appropriate skills to one-shot the boss fight. Great work.
With this bolstered confidence, we went once again to the Shade of Aran. The Shade of Aran wiped us for four straight attempts, but yielded on the fifth. One attempt had us caught in a Flame Wreath when the elementals came up. Bad news for us, the raid was snuffed almost instantly. Having healthstones to use after theMass Polymorph was big for us. I think people are getting the hang of this fight…and a few people need to work on some stamina gear to ensure the pyroblast doesn’t one-shot them.
The Shade of Aran was dropped on our fifth attempt in 4 minutes, 42 seconds. He dropped the Boots of the Incorrupt (disenchanted) and the Saberclaw Talisman (needed by Amrys). I think everyone was celebrating after this fight…this is a real Karazhan milestone. We dropped him (sure after a few wipes) on our first foray into the instance. Good times.
On to the Chess Event. It’s nice to have such a pushover encounter after the big Shade fight. Trivia explained to the newcomers how to use their chess pieces. I got a chance to be the king. I was charging forward towards the opposing king, but was eventually caught trapped between 5 of their pieces and 3 of our pieces. I was surrounded. I was spamming my attack and heroism as best I could. I was getting great heals. Eventually I was able to break through and attack the opposing king. It was a relief to see his health going down faster than mine. Great healers on our side.
The Chess Event chest dropped the Girdle of Treachery (needed by Predictys) and the Headdress of the High Potentate.
The group decided to take a shot on Prince, although time was winding down quickly. We had Armandeluz in the group, he’s a top-notch holy Paladin. It took a while to get the explanation of the fight off, and we took our shot. I was thoroughly impressed…I was just hoping I wouldn’t go down like a rag-doll in the opening seconds of the fight. We got lucky with the infernal drops (I was tanking Prince in one of the “typical” spots, about 40 yards in front of the door). Amrys got some hard lessons about Enfeeblement and what happens if you don’t get out of range in time. We were able to get into phase 2 (albeit just barely) on our first-ever try. That’s hot stuff.
We got the pep talk from Trivia and Armandeluz, which is good for the newcomers I think, to put things in perspective. Our first week together as a group, including 4 completely new people, and we one-shot mots of the bosses in Karazhan and get Prince to phase 2 on our first try. Good things lay ahead for the group. This was a great evening. We could have moved faster in places (such as getting back after a death and buffing up), but Illhoof and Shade and Chess down, that’s a great accomplishment. We would be back for a shot at the remaining tougher bosses.
Rockstar Downs Big Bad Wolf
This is the group’s first Opera Event; the first draw was Big Bad Wolf. One-shotted. Rockstar poses next to the wolf’s corpse. Eternal Force Karazhan group 3 is off to a terrific start.