Alternate Strategies

So, once again last night, we ventured into Karazhan. Once again, we made our way up to Shade of Aran. Once again, we had our strategy down, but even more refined. And... once again, we wiped. Basically, we discovered that Blizzard + Elementals = Bad. Shade cast the Blizzard just before he spawned the elementals. So, next time in, I called a full halt on DPS when Shade was at 42% and he was starting the Blizzard. It worked out much better, and people should do well to remember that little gem: don't be afraid to call a halt if you're gonna get multiple bad things at once.

After downing Shade, we headed straight for Prince (after Chess, of course). Matticus has posted a strategy that mostly worked for us the week before, so I thought I'd try it again. It's very similar to the door strategy that I had seen on may of the strategy sites before. To me, it just turns the fight into too much of a luck fight. I was skeptical about there being a safe spot where Infernals never drop. Last night, one dropped pretty much right behind the tank, and then one dropped in our laps (more or less). So, while you have a higher chance for a Infernal to drop near you if you're sitting in the middle, you also have a lot more options of where you can run to. The ability to have options is what turns the fight into strategy for me. Because we got a later start (and a few attempts on Shade), we had to call it without downing Prince. We only used the pinned up against a wall strategy last night; I think we'll go back to the more flexible position/strategy tonight, and down him. :)

Shade of Aran - Revisited

There seems to be a recurring theme whenever we've stepped into the room that houses the Shade of Aran. No, I'm not talking about last week's fiasco when somebody kept moving. This theme goes even further back then that. Yes, this is probably review for a lot of folks, but I know it's important.

I'm not sure what the most important thing is when fighting Shade. There probably isn't one single thing. Keep the Fireballs and Frost Bolts interrupted. Run away when he sucks you in in preparation for the Arcane Explosion. Move in a clockwise motion to stay away from the Blizzard. Don't move, change direction, or switch forms when Flame Wreath is up. Those are all important. People generally seem to remember those quite easily, and that's probably due to the fact that they happen throughout the entire encounter.

But what I want to talk about are the elementals that spawn at roughly 40%. First rule: You cannot ignore them. Every single time I've tried to kill Shade and somebody wants to "just burn him down" when the elemental spawn, I know it's going to be a wipe. Banish them, fear them, make them scream like little girls, tank them... something has to be done. Furthermore, something has to be done with all of them. If you ignore them, they will quickly single-target the healer with the highest threat, and destroy him quite rapidly. I did mention that all of them need to be picked up in some form or another, right?

Last night we pretty much went straight to Shade (Moroes, Opera, Curator first, obviously). We started a bit late, but one-shotted all the bosses before Shade. We only had time for 2 (or was it 3?) attempts on Shade. The first time, our warlock died in the first Blizzard with some Arcane Missiles on the side. (Oh wait... that's what I thought happened, but it was never clear exactly what went down.) Then the next time, we were doing great at the beginning. Once the elementals spawned, things went South real quick. The plan was to banish one, then kill the rest individually. I don't think we were very good at single-targeting, nor were we good at picking them all up. Sounds like one of our healers got pummeled by 2 elementals. Go figure.

At any rate, now that we know what's wrong, it should be an easy walk in the park tonight. Keep in mind, that a lot of the new people we have, haven't run these instances before. It's one thing to explain fights, it's another to see it in action and actually do them.

Karazhan - Revisited

I'll admit that it's a bit frustrating being in the position we're in. We were basically at the point of having Gruul's on farm, not needed (as a whole) to do Kara anymore, and start working on a whole bunch of other 25-man content. But when you lose 4 of your top 5 healers due to various reasons, it's forced us to re-tool a little in Karazhan.

Last week we were still working on the aftermath of the bit of guild drama we experienced. We had enough people to run one group through Karazan. We cleared all but Nightbane. Besides some major issues with Maiden (most likely due to no paladins) and Shade (still not sure which veteran player kept moving), we one-shotted all of the bosses. As for Nightbane, we gave him one try (maybe two) and then our Main Healer went afk, and didn't seem to come back. (Remind me to ask him what happened, btw.) I'm sure we could have done him as well, we just didn't get back in there after Friday.

This week, the troops are back, and we've got everything aligned to get two groups back in Kara. There's still a lot of upgrades in there for the group, especially since one of our highest DPS people is gearing up the resto Shaman to help with healing. He really enjoys that, so he'll probably make that his main. We're still recruiting (any healers on Bronzebeard Alliance interested) for a number of positions, including a tank now as well.

We've got some fun people, so as much as I'd rather be doing new content, I'll be okay running Kara as well. I suppose it's not all bad. Gives me the chance to get those enchants that have eluded me thus far. So, the Karazhan topic will continue to grow. I'll just have to figure out a way to make money since I'm not getting any gear upgrades.

Healer Classes Defined

Last night, we had a very difficult time with Shade of Aran. In the transition, we lost a lot of healers. And for various reasons (Internet/computer went down for days, RL issues, etc), we have been extremely limited on our healing this week. For healing, we had an undergeared shaman, a moderately geared shaman, and a moderetly geared paladin. We oddly enough had some huge issues with the Flame Wreath. Why anyone was moving when everyone knows that fight and has done it successfully on multiple occasions is beyond me.

So, I thought I'd take a moment today to talk about the different types of healers and how they function, or at least how I understand they heal. I'll be making some over simplifications, but feel free to correct me if I'm flat out wrong. I won't go into the buffs that each brings to a group; that's beyond the scope of this post, but is a good discussion for the future.

Druids
This class is the king (or queen) of the Heal-Over-Time spells (HoTs). With the proper spell rotation, they can keep HoTs up on 3 people at a time. Their spells are generally quick casting, if not instant-cast, but they do not have strong direct heal spells. Because of the quick casting times, they can generally be mobile, but have the disadvantage that in Treant form, they move slower. Having a resto druid can help keep a tank up during periods of mass silence. They also have Innervate that can replenish mana for themselves or any target they choose. Also, they have a Tranquility which is an AoE heal but is on a 10-minute cooldown timer. As a warlock does damage, a druid does heals.

Paladin
King of the direct heals. For the most part, paladin spells take time to cast. They do have the intant-cast Lay on Hands which replenishes health up to the maximum health of the caster, but it's on an hour cooldown and leaves the paladin with exactly zero remaining mana. No HoTs, and no AoE heals. I'd probably equate the rogues damage with a paladin's heals.

Shaman
From my best understanding, Shamans are one of those classes that basically make everyone else look really good. They have some decent spells of their own, mind you, as well. They've got the preventative maintenance of Earth Shield. They have the extremely slow HoT of a Healing Stream Totem. And they have the unpredictable heal of Chain Heal. But their totems are appreciated by all. (Oops... I said I wouldn't go into that discussion.) From what I've seen and read, it's kind of silly to use the Healing Stream Totem when you can use the Mana Stream Totem (which can effectively translate into more health by way of heals). They probably equate most to, well... Shaman in damage.

Priest
Priests have a little bit of everything. They've got HoTs, but not as strong as the Druid. They have direct heals, but not as well as the Paladin. They've got preventative maintenance by way of Prayer of Mending. They can heal themselves as well as another because of Binding Heal. Probably the best AoE heal with Prayer of Healing. They also have Circle of Healing and Lightwell, which both seem like great spells, but are rarely used that I've seen. There's also Holy Nova (another AoE Heal). So, looking at all that AoE, I'd probably have to say their damage equivelant is a mage.

So, is one way better to bring than another? Of course not. They compliment each other and help each other out. If you're in a 25-man run, bring all four. If you're in Karazhan, you're probably going to have to limit it to just 3. Ideally though, it's advantageous to have 3 different classes for your healers so that you have those different abilities. (Plus, they all use different armor types, so no gear is wasted.)

Cryolysis: Revived and Killing Blows

I can't believe that I haven't written about one of my favorite mods. And since it's kind of important to my story, I guess I'll have to highlight it now. So, today you'll get the 2 for the price of 1 deal. I'll try not to be too lengthy.

Many months ago, I finally got tired of opening my spellbook every time I wanted to teleport or open a portal. Open spellbook... click on next page until I get to the back... and then finally find the right city to open the portal. Yet those spells weren't important enough to warrant their own hotbar button either. So, the next logical step was to find a mod that would ease my pain. What I found was a full-service mage buffet.

I believe there was an original mod called Cryolysis. It probably worked about the same as Cryolysis: Revived, but Revived was updated for WoW 2.0. There's a whole bunch of things it can do, but I'll just hit some of my favorites. Head over to Curse for a full description. It's basically this sphere with spell circles around it (as seen in the picture) that is able to cast all mage spells.

-Portals- Yes, all of your portals and teleports are packed in tightly to one button. click the button, and the sub menu will open up with all your choices.

-Reagent Restocking- Set how many Rune of Portals, Rune of Teleports, and Arcane Powder you want, and every time you visit a Reagent Vendor, it will restock those items for you. I'm rarely out of reagents in normal situations.

-Eat/Drink Button- Sure you can create a macro for this, but you get this nice big sphere that you can click on that will cause you to eat and drink at the same time.

-Sheep Watch- I used to use a sheepwatch mod, but that didn't get updated in 2.0. I believe my other mods like Quartz handle the sheep timer bar, but Cryolysis provides me with an audible notification that the sheep was broken. (Warning: not 100 effective, but still pretty, darn good.)

-Mana Gems- You can use the Mana Gem button and sub menu to cast and use your mana gems. Was a huge bonus when I starting doing Kara and found that I needed to have multiple gems for the long fights.

And if that doesn't give you mages a reason to check out this mod, I'm not sure what will.

Well, along with other fights, we went to battle against Prince last night. Our raid DPS wasn't the highest, so I knew that it was going to be a long fight. I used potions, I used evocate, I used gems. Wait... I thought I used gems. Well, those little buttons on Cryolysis are so small. I usually don't have any problem with them at all. Just for whatever reason, I missed that I hadn't used my second gem.

Well, Prince seemed to stay at 1% health for a very, very long time, which I'm sure he did since many of our raid members were dead by this point. (Prince fights aren't usually this close, but our high DPS rogue got boxed in by Infernals, so we lost her early.) I was doing all I could, but didn't have much left. Wand, wand, scorch, pray that he dies, etc. There was a moment of panic when he killed the tank, and ran straight for me. The scorch was all I had left in me until I was out of mana again. It was already casting. Other than myself, just the healers were alive. Scorch goes off, I died, and then he immediately fell over as well. I checked the combat log to verify that my Scorch killed him, which it did. It would have been a lot less scary if I had used my gem (which I didn't know I had at that point) and just Fire Blasted him. But the bigger question in my mind: My Scorch went off first. I killed him. How did he kill me? It's not like it's a Fireball that has a delay between the time you cast it and it hits. It's an instant-hit spell as soon as you finish casting. Odd... just odd. Bottom line, I guess, is that he's dead, so what did it really matter?

Karazhan in One Night

Background: Primogeniture uses the GEM (Guild Event Manager) mod to organize the in-game events. It's really quite simple. You install the mod, and then you sign up for events as we, the guild leadership, puts them on the calendar. For this week's runs, out of 20 slots for 2 groups, only 1 healer signed up for the run. I think it was mostly because people just weren't sure they were going to be on or not. So, to make a long story short, we canceled the "official runs" for this week. But we knew that people would form groups once healers were online, which they did.

Since I'm usually one of the people organizing them, I decided to sit back and see what would happen. Human interactions are always fascinating to me. I'm such a people watcher. It was interesting to see who grouped with whom when they weren't being told where to go.

The group that invited me and I ended up going with was probably one of our "A" teams. Tanks - well, I don't think we had our best-geared tank, but he's still an awesome player. Healers - we had our best paladin, which we always joke is like having two healers anyway, and another paladin as well. DPS - this is probably where we were most stacked. Yes, there's other people in the guild that have higher DPS then a few of us, but not much. And for my guildies that are reading this, if you weren't with us, I'm not minimizing your skill, gear or play style. Bottom Line: we just had a really, really strong group.

Well, we got started a tad late. We usually start at about 8:30, but last night it was closer to 9. We ran at break-neck speeds. After 3 and a half hours, everything was dead except for Attuman and Nightbane. (Oh, and the animal boss, but like anyone counts them.) All bosses were 1-shotted, and we got a lot of great upgrades for people as well. I think only 1 thing was sharded. And we finally got a warrior to win a T-4 item. Gratz to Rinoc.

So, while it's kind of lengthy, it is possible to do Karazhan in one night. Nightbane? Yeah, we'll finish him off tonight. We just had a few people that were too tired to 1-shot him as well.

Karazhan Speed Runs

I'll be honest, as a mage, I like to start fights with 100% mana. It doesn't matter if it's a trash pull or boss pull.

In theory, you never know when you're going to get an extra mob by accident or let the mob get off an extra heal before the interrupt (see also: kill). A mage (and a shadow priest for that matter) without mana can do a maximum of 184 DPS (non-crits) and that's with one of two Black Temple drops. You want to get less crazy, you can get the [Merciless Gladiator's Touch of Defeat], but again, that's only 179 DPS. Since mages have Evocation (every 8 minutes) and mana gems (every 2 minutes), for this analysis, I'd probably group mages with Moonkin Druids (Innervate every 6 minutes) or Shadow Priests (Shadowfiend every 5 minutes). Other classes can life tap (assuming a healer still has mana) or still sustain some dps through weapons or auto-shot.

In practice, however, I think I rarely use more than 50% mana on typical trash pulls. And the 50% is probably only when we have heavy AoE fights. So, in reality, I really don't need to have much down-time between each of the trash fights. I can drink while the trash is being pulled and controlled (assuming no sheep), which should be sufficient to sustain my mana to acceptable levels if not full. I tend to save the evocation for the boss fights because of the long cooldown; but, worst case scenario, I could use that on trash mobs too if need be.

I bring this all up because of what we are now doing in Karazhan. We've pretty much distributed the people into two hopefully equal teams. And both teams move very quick. We did through Curator last night, and then tonight should be another semi-easy walk in the park to clear the rest. It's fast paced, so it feels a lot like the 45-minute Baron runs. Which leads me to think... why were we going slow before? Yeah... I'd say we have Karazhan on farm status.

Group Composition for Karazhan

I remember when we were gearing up for Karazhan and trying to gather all the information possible. Is our gear good enough? Do we have the right classes? How far in should we expect to go? So, I thought I'd throw together a few observations on those questions you may have if you're first venturing into Karazhan.


Group Composition
We generally go with the philosophy of wanting one from each class, and then one additional member. Keep in mind, this is an "ideal" list, and rarely happens in practice. Things to keep in mind: You'll need 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS. You can get away with 2 healers for some of the easier battles, but to make things easy, this is what you'll need.

You may also have some of your hybrids play a duel role at some point. We generally have our pally tank some of the undead groups in the Ballroom right before Moroes. He can usually hold the large, undead groups better than our other tanks, so it speeds up the AoE process with less casualties. Also, a druid for a second tank usually has the gear to go full dps on the fights such as Shade of Aran or Prince where only 1 tank is needed.

You can certainly mix up the groups with different classes. Two or three priests for shackling in Moroes' room certainly doesn't hurt... being able to banish two or more of the elementals in the Shade fight... these aren't bad things. You mainly need to make sure that you stick with the basic rule of 2/3/5. If you have 4 prot tanks, you may want to think about letting 2 of them sit out.

Gear
What is needed? This is kind of a hard question to answer. The response question may be: how far do you want to go? You can probably do the animal bosses the first time in to Karazhan. To get attuned to Kara, you had to do enough in instances that you're probably geared enough for at least those. They may even be your groups first purple boots, bracers, and/or belt. The next few fights mainly take enough coordination, with Moroes and the Opera Event ramping up even more. By the time you're hitting Moroes, you probably shouldn't have any greens except maybe a trinket or two. And in the nights you're not running Karazhan, you should be getting the rest of your Heroic Keys and running Heroic instances. You'll should probably get a feel for what each boss will need as you attempt them. Give them a few attempts each, and don't be afraid to put them off to next week because you need more drops from Maiden or something like that.

Buffs
This one may depend on how much money you want to spend. Flasks are going to be great to use while you're learning these bosses. They persist through death and last for 2 hours. You'll also want an ample supply of Health/Mana pots, food (stam, +dmg or +healing), and mana/wizard oil. As you gear out, you'll probably need less of these things, but it's better to be over prepared and one-shot 3 bosses then having to keep corpse running back.

Those were my initial thoughts of beginning to do Karazhan. Anyone else have ideas for the basics?

Things I Learned about Prince Malchezaar

So, I've talked about Prince once or twice in my blog. And I noticed that I may have "under-blogged" the necessity to have a really well geared tank. I think I've kind of taken that for granted. Of course, aren't tanks and healers always the unappreciated parts of the party? I'm certainly no tank. My range of tank alts is pretty low. I have a level 32 Druid that has pretty much done everything solo. I have a level 26 Paladin that has seen a few low level instances, and even tanked a few. And I have a level 19 Warrior. So, while I can't really give the intimate details of being a stellar tank, I have noticed a huge difference in different tanks that we use.

As with any class, there's two aspects of how well any toon will perform. First, there's the issue of gear. In my opinion, a warrior taking on Prince is probably going to want to have [Crest of the Sha'tar]. Yeah, it takes a bit of instance crawling in the Tempest Keep to make get the exalted rep required, but it's a guaranteed purple. No matter how anyone rolls, as long as you do enough Tempest Keep runs, this will be yours, guaranteed. For a druid, it's going to be [Earthwarden], which requires Coilfang Reservoir runs until exalted with Cenarian Expedition.

The next aspect, and probably more importantly, is the skill of the person actually playing that character. We often joke, sometimes more seriously than others, that certain PUG toons that we've run across got their accounts off of E-bay. It basically means that they didn't take the time to level to 70 (in the true literal meaning of it) or that they just didn't pay attention to how their class works or should work during those 70 levels. I have seen some exceptional players with mediocre gear pull off truly amazing feats.

Again, Prince Malchezaar needs both. The exceptional gear helps to absorb or mitigate some of the devastating damage that he does. But the tank also needs to know when to take potions or use trinkets, etc. It's a tough fight, and there's some luck that comes in as well. He also can proc Windfurry or something of that nature and do like 16K damage in less than a second.

So, what else have I learned? I've learned that his Shadow Nova, which is always a bad thing to take damage from, has a 30 yard range. Coincidently enough, my wand also had a 30 yard range. Luckily, my Scorch and Fireball spells have a > 30 yard range. So, if I can attack with my wand and I'm enfeebled, I'd better back up.

I've also learned to watch the comets that drop out of the sky and become Infernals. The comet always follows the same initial path, and then it will randomly turn once and follow that path until it hits the ground. It's a bit tough to figure out exactly where it will drop, but you can still get a pretty good idea.

Long story made short about last night: We attempted Prince a number of times. I think we got him down to 18% our first attempt, so we knew it would be possible. On the last attempt, his health seemed to sit at 1% for the longest time. Of course, most everyone was dead at that point because of all the Infernal spawns, so it probably did take a really, really long time. But, more importantly... when it was all said and done... Primogeniture had 2 (or 3) people standing over the Prince's dead body. I think it was the first Prince kill for about 7 of the people on the raid, so it was a great accomplishment.

Those are a few of my observations being a ranged DPS watching out for those darn Infernals. What have you learned from your experiences with Prince?

Karazhan Cleared

Looks like I have a little catching up to do. First off, anyone that hasn't read up on the next expansion that was announced at Blizzcon needs to head over to the Wow website right now. I'm sure Wrath of the Lich King and Death Knights will be come up in the conversation from time to time, and I don't want anyone to be confused or left behind. Other than that, I'll just go chronologically.

Thursday night, I had the most upgrades in one night. We killed the Prince, and I got [Nathrezim Mindblade]. The other mage with us, Spellfires, got his T4 helm, so gratz to him. The Prince also dropped the [Adornment of Stolen Souls], which I won on the roll. It was more of a side-grade than an upgrade, but the extra crit is pretty cool.

Next (same night) we went after Nightbane. The fight's really not all that difficult. You just repeat the same thing every 25% of his life. So... maybe I should restate that. If you can handle the first 25% of his life (and his flight right after that), then you should be able to handle all of the fight. Some fights seem to have a stage that totally switches things up and can wipe an unprepared party. Like I said, this is not one of those fights. It took us a number of tries, and a few "just one mores", but we did it. We downed Nightbane. He dropped a great off-hand, [Talisman of Nightbane], which I won as well. Now, if I can only get something to replace my [Shattrath Wraps]...

Our second group was actually the one to down Netherspite on Friday night. I don't recall what he dropped for them. Our group will be trying him tonight. It's all about coordination, from what I can tell. It should be a good fight.

Saturday we all grouped up and headed off to Gruul's Lair. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get to go since our power was out for about an hour, but that was between about 6:30 and 7:30. I must have been bad luck though because our main tank, Thellonious, had his power go out just after we grouped up, about 8:30, and stayed out for an hour as well. Regardless, I was still impressed that our guild is so strong now. I think we had to get 2 (or maybe just 1) person from outside the guild. And there were a few regulars from our guild that weren't on. After some re-adjustments to now having 25 people in the group, and the two quick pulls, we got to the first boss. Long story short: we learned a lot, but we didn't kill very much. We killed the priest, Blindeye the Seer, once, but I think that was about it. I honestly think we're geared enough, it's just appropriating the right resources and getting the strategy down. I guess we'll all need to read up on some sites for this one.

A New Reign

Last night, we had one goal, and one goal only: to dethrone the Prince. It's so cliché to say that this fight is luck based on the positioning of the Infernals, so I won't say that. I will say that certain positioning makes the fight easier, but I'm guessing that it's rarely unbeatable. That said, it took us a few tries to learn our last little lessons in order to get him down. One really key item is to have somebody always orchestrating the dance of positioning the ranged DPS and the Prince with the tank based on the Infernals. Qamen did a great job watching the incoming meteors, estimating where they would drop, and positioning us accordingly. One of our latter attempts we had him down to about 10% before most of our DPS were killed off, ending with a full wipe at 3%. I think we only had 2 people dead when the Prince actually died.

The [Helm of the Fallen Hero] dropped, giving me a 1 in 4 chance to get my T4 head piece. I out rolled 2 people, and the third person passed. I am now the proud owner of the [Collar of the Aldor]. It looks kinda funny on Leiandra, to be quite honest. But no, you can't have it. lol. I'm also realizing how expensive it is to upgrade my gear these days. After I traded in the token for the head piece, I got the 90g head enchant from the Sha'tar. Plus I had to run out to Allerian Stronghold to buy a [Swift Starfire Diamond] with 8 Spirit Shards (those were "cheap" since I have about 50 just sitting in my bank), and then another 45g to get a [Glowing Nightseye]. If I hadn't done all that, the [Spellstrike Hood] would have been a better piece. I'm not complaining, just telling what I did.

This week has been really good to me as far as loot goes. I got the [Gloves of the Fallen Hero] (by default since the other two mages had it and we didn't have any warlocks or hunters in the group that night) off of the Curator. That translates into [Gloves of the Aldor], but I don't think it's worth it to use those and give up my [Spellfire Gloves] and the set bonus there. By some charity, I got the [Mantle of the Mind Flayer] off of Shade of Aran. I got the [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury] off of Moroes. And I hit exalted with Violet Eye, so I can now exchange my ring for the best ring from them (which again will cost me in enchanting mats to put the +12 Spell Damage on it).

I'm really excited about the loot, but I'm even more excited that we're progressing, downing more bosses, and gearing up to take on even more bosses. Next week we should start 2 Kara groups again. And then we'll see what we can do in Gruul's Lair on Saturday night. It'll be fun to see everyone else get purpleized as well. Until next week!

BUGGED!!! and Illhoof down

Prince Malchezaar isn't an extremely bad dude. In fact, if the Infernals weren't landing all over the place, he'd probably be quite easy. But he does become substantially more difficult if you only have 8 people to take him down. Last night we discovered a few things. So much so, that I could almost put the label as Beginning Tips. So, in case you didn't know...

• If you don't kill all the bosses in Karazhan, things respawn. Be careful as you move towards a boss you have not yet downed this week.
• I suppose this goes for any boss that has a door.If you start a game of chess, you have to finish it. During the chess game, everyone gets a permanent debuff where no spells or attacks of any kind can be used.
• When Prince Malchezaar is engaged, make sure you're on the correct side of the door. It will close, and you can be locked out.
• Sometimes GM's are helpful and funny, sometimes they are not.

We started out the night having a few members believe that everything was clear from Shade's room (where we could now be teleported) to the Chess Event. Imagine their surprise when they ran into that first room only to get ambushed by a Sorcerous Shade or two.

On our way to Prince, one of our members thought it would be fun to talk with Warchief Blackhand since our usual experiences only let us speak with King Llane. He did so, and unintentionally started another game of chess. With our full raid buffs, I don't think that anyone really noticed that we were all silenced to both spells and normal attacks. So, we made the next pull and quickly found our mistake. Corpse run. Killed King Llane (had to be different that normal). Then we proceeded as normal.

Got out to Netherspace where Prince hangs out. Explained the fight and our strategy, and then we moved in to engage. Well, our two warlocks didn't realize that we were starting, and were on the wrong side of the door when it closed, leaving us with only 8 people to fight Prince. We figured it would probably result in a wipe, but surprisingly did quite well even with the deficit. Corpse run. Raid buff. Engage.... what? I said "Engage!" Turns out we successfully bugged Prince so that we could not attack him ("Invalid Target") or even body pull him. So... we went on to the next boss.

Meanwhile, I had opened a ticket for a GM in the hopes that they could somehow help us with our plight with Prince. We were about to start fighting with Netherspite when he contacted me. There was mostly nothing he could do about Prince. He said that we could soft reset the instance (exit the instance for 45 minutes) and that should take care of it. It was late, the instance was to reset the next morning, and I don't think we still would have had 10 people if we had said, "Okay, everyone. Take a 45-minute break." It's just a shame that the GM's don't have more power when it comes to something like this.


We did leave on a positive note though. We had one warlock go grab her fire resist gear, and killed two pulls to get to Illhoof's room. With the warlock in 205 fire resist, it was a relatively easy fight. The first time we attempted it, we missed a small part of the explanation that didn't bode well for the fight. Corpse run. Raid buff. Explained further. Downed him quite simply. So, there's one more notch on our belts. We had a Breastplate of the Lightbringer and Fool's Bane drop.

Today's the reset, so we'll start all the fun times again tonight.

Terestian Illhoof

We had a bunch of our higher DPS folks out this weekend, but we went after Terestian Illhoof. To cut to the chase, we did not down him, but we learned a lot. And our second to last attempt we got him down to about 10%. The imps that spawn out of the portals can easily overtake you if you're not constantly paying attention to them. We had a warlock spam Seed of Corruption which would take most of them out, but every once and a while, me or the other mage had to use some additional AoE to keep them in check.

At least the run isn't bad. Running back from the graveyard to attempt The Curator or Shade of Aran is really a pain in the butt. However, once you kill Shade, you can get teleported into Shade's room from the doorman, then take a quick jaunt to any of the remaining bosses. Nobody likes a wipe, but a wipe with a long walk is just painful.

In the fight with Illhoof, he will randomly sacrifice a player. The sacrificed player will be transported to the middle of the room and have Demonic Chains placed on him. The chains will do substantial damage every second, which means that the healers have to keep the person alive, and the DPS has to kill the chains ASAP. And for most of the DPS, they then have to quickly retarget Illhoof in order to burn him down as quick as possible. Most of the strategy sites talked about created a macro like this: "/tar Demonic Chains". That was nice to be able to DPS the chains quickly, but then I thought it was a pain to retarget Illhoof. So, while waiting for mana and in between deaths, I created this:

/tar [button:2] Terestian Illhoof; Demonic Chains

This macro gives you some options. If you left-click it (which I tend to spam once I see Illhoof casting sacrifice), it will target the Demonic Chains. Once the Demonic Chains are gone or if you lost Illhoof as the target for any reason, you can right-click the macro, and it will target Illhoof again. Granted, I know it didn't actually get us that last 10% that we needed, but most of my group thought it was a pretty good addition.

We'll see what we can do to take down a few punk bosses tonight.

Sacrificial Rogue

Today's blog goes out to a rogue in our guild named Solidad. As you probably saw in my post about the Curator, he's one of our highest, if not the highest, DPSer. Last night we took down Shade of Aran, but just barely. Hey, don't get me wrong. A kill is a kill. But we did one-shot him, so that's a great sign as well.

At any rate, we got him down pretty far. We had two warlocks that dealt with the 4 elementals. Everything was going well. We did, however, get sheeped. And a few of us died shortly after the mass pyroblast. And when I say "a few" it basically got down to about 3 people. So, this is where the story gets good.

Shade's health was down to 3%. All of our healers had been dead for a bit now. Elementals were gone. All DPS (all 3 of them) was on Shade. Then Shade decides to do his suck in, slow, Arcane Explosion thing. Davecrocket and Thellonious (I think that was who was left alive) ran out, but Solidad was determined to get him down before another round of random attacks erupted from Shades hands. It kinda turned into a sacrificial thing though. He got him down to 1% before the Arcane Explosion went off, killing him. He had used Cloak of Shadows, but he must have used it a bit too early (or that 10% possibility of not resisting kicked in). To cheers from everyone, Thellonious and Davecrocket finished him off, and we had our second defeat of the Shade of Aran.

Close calls... you gotta love them.

Shade Slain

On Saturday night, we took a band of adventures into the library of Karazhan to confront the Shade of Aran. We first warmed up by playing a quick game of chess (which I've found to be one of my favorite parts of Karazhan, probably because nobody gets killed). Then we talked about strategy and engaged Shade.

We did well to communicate and keep most of his fireballs and frost bolts interrupted, thus keeping his mana consumption to a minimum. At 40% health, when the elementals were summoned, our warlock took care of two (banish and fear) while we tank and spanked the other two down. This was probably where Shade used most of his mana. We had the elementals under control. We refocused on Shade. And at 3% health, he mass polymorphed us all. Was that the end for that attempt? Oh no... not this time. We were all topped off and ready for the pyroblasts this time. And while the polymorph had meant a wipe for our attempts in the past, not this time. The Shade of Aran left us the Pendant of the Violet Eye and the Drape of the Dark Weaver.

We next decided to check out the Prince and find out how we could do at that point. Did I mention that we only had 2 healers? Yeah, we know... you should normally have 3, but when you have uber-healing (and a shadow priest's VE on top of that), it was no problem for Shade. Prince, however, probably needed a bit more healing. We got him into the second phase a few times, but we just didn't get him that far. Who knows... maybe this next weekend. But again, we killed Shade, so we made progress and we were happy.

Curator... Easy Mode

I don't think I mentioned it, but we've added a few more recruits to our ranks. We're now running two groups to Karazhan each week. Friday nights are great because everyone's on and wants to play. Hence, why we needed to do two groups so we don't have a bunch of people sitting out each week. During the week, we've had to PUG a few people, but I think it's worked out really well in getting some new, high quality recruits as well.

The main part of the huge need to run two groups came from an influx of about 5 new players that all wanted to join our guild at once. Most of them have a lot (if not all) of their Karazhan gear, but like the time we play. We've known some of them from previous guilds as well. Overall, they've been a great asset so far, and we expect to be able to do many wonderful things with all of them.
That said, it's a kind of paradigm shift for me. I went from being number 1 or 2 on top of the damage meters to 5th. (I imagine I would have been 6th had the pally been doing damage. lol.) I'm completely okay with it. It's not like I have this ego trip that I have to be on top. Most important to me is that we're succeeding, and we are.

At any rate, the main point of this post is more of bragging rights with our new members in the guild. The main damage phase to the Curator is when he evocates and takes something like 250% damage. I had a Fire Blast that did 5339 damage for goodness sake. Well with me being on the top of the damage meters, we'd usually have the Curator down about 25% after each evocation; so, it would take us about 4 evocates to kill him. With me being number 5 on the damage meters, we took him down in 2 evocates. 50% damage on each evocate. Yeah... that's a lot of damage.

I have a feeling that we'll have fun storming the castle tonight.

What did you do, Ray?

In our first trip past the Curator, the week before last, it was quite a learning experience for us. Not really knowing any of the fights, we had a number of wipes, and there was a general feeling of slowness in the pace that we progressed to our final destination, which was the Chess Event. This past weekend, we decided to try our hand at the Shade of Aran which brought us through many of the same trash mobs that we did the week before on our way to play chess. The speed in which we went through the trash was noticeably faster. So, if nothing else, we can be taught.

Once getting to the door leading to the Shade of Aran's room, we explained the fight again, buffed up, and went in to a quick wipe. The Shade's Arcane Explosion fills almost the whole room, and you have to have your body against the wall. Most of us, including myself, hung out a little too close so his first Arcane Explosion caused the wipe. The next attempt was a little better. We weren't stopping enough of his fireballs and frostbolts so his mana was diminishing as fast as his health. The end result was a few deaths, a mass polymorph, a few pyroblasts, and basically... a wipe.

The next attempt was going great. His health was below his mana. We were all doing great. We had him down to about 50% health. Then a Flame Wreath came. No problem, nobody move. Well... it was no Stay Puff Marshmallow man, but somebody moved. And that caused that wipe. We still would have had to deal with the elementals, but to that point, it was the best we had done.

It's really funny how self doubt worked on me the next couple of days. I knew not to move. Deadly Boss Mobs had this huge message across the screen of "Don't Move". At the time, I knew I didn't move, but over the next few days I found myself thinking, "Did I move?"

I think we got two more shots after that and we came close, but no cigar. The elemental adds were our demise one time, killing our main tank. And I don't recall now what happened the last time. We then decided to go for the "free loot" from the Chess Event since there would be enough respawn to block us from going freely in the next time. Due to an unfortunate pull, we wiped, and that was the end of the evening.

It's a learning process. It's progression. There's some nights where you don't get the phat lewt. I had fun, but it was just one of those nights.

Tragedy for Romulo and Julianne

I really need to remember to take screen shots. I'll put that on my to do list. But last night we took down Romulo and Julianne, which means that we've not successfully defeated all of the bosses for the Opera event. Having done all of them, I'd say my favorite is the Big Bad Wolf. It's just a lot of fun to run around with the Little Red Riding Hood debuff on, providing you with the increased speed and being chased by a Big Bad Wolf. But I digressed.

For a quick summary of what happens... you kill Julianne, then you kill Romulo, then you kill them both together. Oh, and they have to die within about 10 seconds of each other. Again, see BossKillers for a more in depth explanation. The trickiest parts seem to be at the transitions. Yes, you need to keep vigilant to get rid of both of their buffs, and Julianne's heals must be stopped, but the transitions is where we seem to have the issue.

On our first attempt last night, we seemed to have everything going well at first. Killed one, then the other, and then they both came up. DPS was split between the two, we shifted focus when one had lost more health than the other. And at one point, Romulo needed more DPS, so we focused on him. Well... we lost focus on Julianne, she got off a heal. Meanwhile we killed Romulo, but there was no way we could kill Julianne once she got off the heals, so it ultimately meant a wipe for our party.

The second time was just like clockwork. We easily took them both down. And it made my night when Romulo dropped the Trial-Fire Trousers, and I won. It was a pretty big upgrade over my Incanter's Trousers. But since I had the spell thread on my old ones, I couldn't use them yet. I got the mats, and I'll get the thread on the new ones tonight.

Next it was off to Curator. After one failed attempt, we had him down to about 25%. Everyone had health. Everyone had mana. It was going to be an easy victory. Then our main tank disconnected. Well, the Curator went through and smacked down everyone at that point. I'm pretty sure the DC was the cause of the first failed attempt as well, we just weren't as close to killing the Curator. So, we politely moved him out of the party, got somebody else in, and then took him down on the first try with the new group.

We'll venture in a bit further tonight and see what fate brings us.

Chess Anyone?

Well, with the amount of time we had last night, we figured that it would be better to get the guaranteed loot from the Chess Event. "Guaranteed" only in the sense that once we got there, we'd most likely get the loot, but getting there seemed to be the challenge. It didn't help that our two MT's were not online. But it did help that we have a new recruit that puts all of us to shame on the damage meters.

The Chess event itself is kinda neat. If you don't succeed, you just get to try again. Nobody dies. No need to have a SS ready. Mages can effectively heal by controlling the bishops. Paladins can do damage. It's all great fun once you get there. We even had 3 epic items that dropped off of trash last night. One of them was Blinkstrike. (Still trying to decide what to do with it since it's BoE.)

But it's back to the beginning tonight. I'm assuming that if we have the decent group (like we've been having), we'll bust through all the beginning stuff and the Curator (at least) by the end of the evening. I'll be back to post about it on Thursday. Have a great 4th of July!

Curator Down

I love it when a plan comes together. So, among all my moaning and groaning about players that left the guild, something special happened. I guess you could say that the cream rose to the top, but that sounds a bit cliche. On Friday, we had most of our best players online. And I'm not just talking about most well-equipped. I'm talking about mad skillz. I'm talking about experience of working together. I'm talking about a group that just gelled. The group simply went very smooth.

Going in to Karazhan on Friday, we had only downed Attuman. Walking out on Friday night, we had downed, Moroes, Maiden of Virtue, The Big Bad Wolf, and The Curator. Some of the phat lewt was that of T4 Token that our Shaman got, Pauldrons of the Solace-Giver, Red Riding Hood's Cloak, Ribbon of Sacrifice, and Bands of Nefarious Deeds. (There may have been something else, but with all that loot, can you blame me for possibly forgetting something?)

We'll see if we can down the Shade of Aran tonight before the reset tomorrow.