First Impressions In Magtheridon’s Lair
Eternal Force had Magtheridon’s Lair on the calendar for last night. We only had about a dozen signups and a handful of people who showed up on time. But, with some persistence and some luck, the officers and some of the more senior members were able to swing enough people to fill the 25-man raid. We ended up entering the instance about 90 minutes after the scheduled raid time.
I’d been reviewing the fight for the previous several hours, and had some idea of what to expect. The best video I watched was Last Resort’s first kill (third overall kill in the world) from a Mage’s point of view. Their effort was very clean, very professional, and undoubtedly the product of careful preparations.
The first trash pull of three Hellfire Warders was pretty chaotic…the good news is that all 25 of the raid members survived. Each of the mobs was doing a Shadow Bolt Volley, which made the pull feel very chaotic, because everyone was constantly being barraged by shadow damage. I tried to keep Shadow Ward up, but it would be quickly consumed by the large amounts of shadow damage.
The second trash pull was made versus the patrol of three Hellfire Warders…the tanks fought them on the ramp, which I didn’t think was a good idea. As a ranged caster I immediately had line of sight issues and had to run into the fight. By this time, some of the melee people had been feared…right into the next group of Hellfire Warders at the base of the ramp. We had a pretty quick 25-man wipe because of this. Note that Tremor Totems are ineffective against Hellfire Warder fear spells.
After we came back, we managed to clear the remaining trash (4 packs of 3 Hellfire Warders in all) with only a few deaths. All of the trash mobs must be cleared prior to engaging Magtheridon and the channelers, otherwise they too will oin the fight. We then waited for Marluce, our raid leader, to begin making assignments for the fight.
Our five tanks were assigned to the five Hellfire Channelers. Five healers were assigned to cover those five tanks, and the remaining healers were assigned to raid duty. Two people were assigned to each of the Manticron Cubes…we didn’t assign an emergency cube-clicker to the cubes, which was a little surprising. But as it turned out, we wouldn’t need to think that far ahead just yet. I knew I would be busy banishing and fearing some of the Burning Abyssals that would appear.
We had an unofficial first attempt, because one of the guild hunters inexplicably fired on a Hellfire Channeler, starting the encounter. It must have been an accident of some sort, and he promptly apologized. It took a bit of time to once again get everyone into place, from graveyard to Magtheridon’s room. It took about 42 seconds for the full wipe, so I figured we couldn’t do any worse than that.
Our official first attempt wasn’t good. The full wipe took place in about 2 minutes, 29 seconds. By the time Magtheridon had broken free, we had none of the Hellfire Channelers down, as opposed to the recommended three. The initial target managing to heal himself at least five times was definitely not helping the matter. I noticed that there were a lot more demons on the loose than I thought there would be.
Our second attempt was a lot better. We downed the first two Hellfire Channelers, and were working on the third when Magtheridon broke free. Unfortunately, Marluce is our main tank and he tanks the third Hellfire Channeler in the kill order…so it makes the transition a bit awkward in this type of scenario. The bottom line is our DPS needs to be a lot heavier than it was.
Again the loose demons were causing issues. I think Warlocks and Hunters (we had brought 7 in all) need to be a lot more proactive about getting those demons under control…I believe to the point of almost ignoring the Hellfire Channelers. Between banishing, fearing, and ice trapping, most strategy guides say that’s enough to have them under control. I spent about half-and-half of my time DPSing the Hellfire Channelers and running around to control the demons…I may have to work on full-time Abyssals duty. I can’t imagine how ineffective our DPS against the Hellfire Channelers will then seem.
I was assigned click duty for one of the far cubes, but we would never live long enough for Magtheridon to begin attempting his first Blast Nova. Our second attempt lasted about the same length of time…I died after 1 minute, 55 seconds, and Magtheridon emerged shortly thereafter to wipe the raid. But we had shown some definite improvement. It was at about this time, some of the members began dropping from the raid, and the raid was called.
It seems like it’s going to be a while before we have this fight down. And since the raid broke, the problems about the loose Abyssals and the low DPS against the Hellfire Channelers are running around in my brain.
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.
Picking Up Heroic Blood Furnace
Last night I joined a group for heroic Blood Furnace. That happened to be yesterday’s daily heroic dungeon quest. Some of the guys from Eternal Force were in the group, plus a tank that they had picked up. I was asked in because the mage had apparently gotten frustrated with the number of wipes they’d had. The first boss was already down. It was already late, and the Hunter needs a lot more Badges of Justice, so I jumped at the chance.
The group was led by Slampig (70 protection Warrior) of Spiritus Mundi. The Eternal Force crew consisted of Amrys (70 enhancement Shaman), Glowfoot (70 Warlock), and Aldahar (70 holy Paladin). Kruenor (70 marksmanship Hunter) of Apex of War rounded out the crew.
The group was clearing the room in which the second boss would be engaged. I was secretly hoping they’d gotten past this point, because the four waves of mobs leading into the second boss can be pretty annoying. The mage, whoever he was, had probably given up hope. The pulls to clear the room were pretty crisply and efficiently done. I had a few chances to showcase my trapping.
We began the event, and I was able to pull one away for trapping immediately. I use a macro to target the tank’s target and sent my pet after it. Unfortunately, he must have been tabbing through targets to get threat on each of the mobs…and at that moment he had my trap targeted (he was safely out of range), and I ended up breaking my trap with my pet. It took me a moment to get my mob back under control in a new trap, but I felt like I’d already broken my rhythm…Aldahar ended up throwing a heal my way, which should have been unnecessary, had I been more patient.
The strange thing was how well Slampig was able to retain aggro on all the mobs. On each of the successive three waves I was unable to drag away a target. I used all my best threat moves, including the high rank Distracting Shot and a pair of Arcane shots. Finally, I had to give up and just DPS the tank target. Slampig’s threat rotations are really impressive. With his ability to hold the 3-4 mobs on each wave, and our DPS, we had no problems with those pulls.
We engaged Broggok. I was hoping Slampig would do a little more kiting, because my pet attacks the boss from behind, and poor Stryker (my pet Ravager) ended up being in the rings of poison that Broggok leaves on the ground. I was able to misdirect to Slampig early and we went all out. I threw a few heals to Stryker, but he did die midway through the fight. Broggok dropped the Virtue Bearer’s Vambracers (disenchanted) and a Jagged Chrysoprase (taken by Aldahar).
The demon pulls weren’t a huge deal. Luckily we had Glowfoot along to banish one. Everytime we dropped the first demon and prepared for the second one to be released, I noticed the second demon was focused on Aldahar. Aldahar stepped back a few paces to allow the tank to pickup the released demon…and I dropped a frost trap right in front of Aldahar. I think I saved him from taking a big hit at least twice in this fashion, as we cleared our way to the final boss.
We would ultimately require four attempts to down the final boss, thereby completing our heroic quest for the day. But it shouldn’t have gone that way, not with our group makeup.
Slampig pulled the warlock adds around the corner, as we were all familiar with. As four of the five adds came to approach him, I would pick off the last with a scatter shot (to stun him in place), and then drop him into an ice trap. I tried to explain the logic of this to the group, but they wouldn’t listen to me until the fourth attempt. When the final add is killed, the boss is freed and we must rush in to engage him. Until that point however, we can heal up, wait for mana to come up, and rage for the Warrior continues to build, because we are still in combat. But these guys were just immediately breaking the trap and killing the add.
Our failures on the first three attempts were due to a variety of factors. Amrys is often too slow to run out, and when she does, she often runs out too far and can’t get back in time for maximum DPS. It didn’t help that the Vent server was being flaky again and garbling the voice messages. On the second attempt, I spent a second too long trying to get the Magtheridon’s Rage buff from the green vent, got caught in the polygons of the vent, and died on one of Keli’dan’s Blast Waves. On the third attempt, the party was at half health when they destroyed my trap target and ran in. A little piece of me died. As a tactician and as a Hunter, I’m furious to relinquish any tactical advantage in combat…I was seriously annoyed here.
The fourth attempt they waited on breaking the trap. Ironically enough, the group was at nearly full health and no one was debuffed with Mark of Shadow. Aldahar must have been especially good at removing this buff on the fourth attempt. We ran in and engaged Keli’dan the Breaker, and dropped him like a rock. Keli’dan the Breaker dropped a Primal Nether, the Eaglecrest Warboots, the Leggings of the Unrepentant, and the Robe of Effervescent Light. Everything was sharded.
All in all, it was a successful pickup run, but we could have died a few less times. I made a few mistakes with the ice trap, which is pretty rare for me.
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 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 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 and Karazhan Part 2
Friday night marked Rockstar’s return to Karazhan. Once again we were having some troubles filling the raid at the assigned time; hopefully that problem is alleviated as time goes by. Rockstar doesn’t like being kept waiting. On this night Predictys would be swapping in and out as needed with Radiantys…tonight’s card starts with Maiden of Virtue and then the Curator.
As we lined up the start the trash pulls, someone was walking around and got aggro from the patrol in the Maiden’s hallway. Very careless. If you’re new (or even veteran), why would you go farther than the tank? If you’re stealthed and marking or assigned to check something, then you can go past the tank. If you’re not stealthed, there is no reason to go past the tank. I immediately jumped in and took aggro from both members of the patrol, and hoped the healers would notice and jump into action. Luckily for me, they did, and we survived with no deaths. We waited for the rest of the group to arrive.
We quickly cleared through the hallway leading to the Maiden, and had a quick briefing on what would ensue. With a holy Paladin in the group, Blessing of Sacrifice was now on the table. Radiantys did a great job of keep that on me during the fight, and the heals were good through Repentance. At the very end of the fight, Radiantys was killed, but Seraphyne kept up the heals for the last bit of time.
On this night, Maiden of Virtue got one-shotted in 2 minutes, 22 seconds. She dropped the Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden (needed by Rockstar) and the Bracers of Maliciousness (needed by Calithis).
Because Opera Event was already cleared, we moved through the empty chambers to begin clearing to the Curator. The pulls involving the Arcane Anomaly and Syphoners were educational for a lot of people. We had spotty deaths, this person on this pull, or that person on that pull…I focused on tanking the Arcane Anomaly while the others burned down the other mobs. And then it was time for the big event…Curator.
I was a little surprised to see that Trivia called for the DPS to be more spread out. There were a couple of rogues and a cat Druid in the group…with that much melee DPS I figured they would use a cluster strategy. But no matter…I can watch and learn. I pulled the Curator and spun him right at the requested spot (the tip of the third diamond in the floor). Seraphyne was on my left wing providing my with heals.
Tanking the Curator is really a simple task. I’m left alone with him, spamming my best threat-generating moves and trying to do as much “damage” as possible. I have no idea what DPS tanks or high-end tanks are supposed to be capable of, but it seems like I’m very consistently in the 200-230 DPS range…with not a lot of room to improve on that. I was able to call out the Evocation state, but ideally I’d like to be able to call out how many Astral Flares have spawned, so that people have a better idea where we’re at in the phase.
We one-shotted the Curator in 5 minutes, 5 seconds. I died right at the 5 minute mark, literally just before the Curator was killed. The Curator dropped the Gloves of the Fallen Hero (won by Lofkalar) and the Wrynn Dynasty Greaves (needed by Rockstar).
We had a short break and continued. The clearing was moving flawlessly. When we got to the bookcase leading to Terestian Illhoof and killed the demon trash, the group decided to take a shot on Illhoof. I was dubious, because we had no Warlock in the group. I was even more dubious about this attempt when the strategy was unfolded…the two mages in the group were going to be trading off AoE duties on the imps. I’ve heard this strategy works, but I’m skeptical. The key is DPS to the Demon Chains in this fight, and losing two mages doesn’t help that out. Mage AoE against infinite spawns of imps seems counter-productive due to the extensive mana drain that ensues.
We had another one of those moments where someone carelessly aggros the mobs because they’re not paying attention and just walks too close to them. As a tank, I have to sigh and immediately jump into the mobs…I burned my Challenging Shout picking up those imps standing right at Illhoof’s doorway because of someone’s mistake. Then we jumped into the Illhoof fight, and had a wipe after several minutes. This let people have a chance to use their macros to target the Demon Chains and see how things work. Just like our withdrawal from the Maiden on our previous night, we withdrew from Illhoof after one “experimental” attempt. Onwards to the Shade.
Time was winding down, but we wanted to have one experimental attempt on the Shade of Aran as well. The fight required a long explanation…survivability is of course stressed in the fight, as well as the DPS race, but of course that isn’t clear until you actually jump into the fight and see how it works.
We did okay…the attempt lasted over 2 minutes…Radiantys learned that when the Shade uses Arcane Explosion, you MUST immediately get to the edge of the room. No time for an extra heal. I think Lofkalar learned a similar lesson with moving out of the Blizzard effect. For me as a tank, it’s a bit depressing because the Shade seems to have a random aggro table. I ended up being unable to tank and able to do a meek 215 DPS.
The group did pretty well for the second night in Karazhan…two more one-shotted bosses (including our first look at Curator). We had a couple of looks at the Illhoof and Shade fights. Overall, I’m happy with the group’s ability to destroy trash, improvise in emergency scenarios, and analyze boss fights. Big things to work on are refraining from careless aggro (on both trash AND bosses) and focusing on the clearing speed of the raid.
On this night I would have to spend 300g on stamina gems and enchants for my new gloves and leggings, but I am extremely pleased to do it.
Rockstar Downs Attumen
Rockstar poses in front of the slain Attumen…this is the first kill for Rockstar. Predictys tanked Midnight and Rockstar tanked Attumen.