Tanking Krosh Firehand

I think I've mentioned that Primogeniture has kind of taken a break from raiding. We just weren't getting the numbers, people signing up and not showing up, too many people wanting to do other things... so we decided to stop. Turns out, the members of our raiding guild actually like to raid though, as we have a pretty big sign up list for tonight's SSC run. The plan is to kill Lady Vashj, so we'll see how that goes.

But last night, we had about 20 people online, so I quickly threw together another Mag run (cake walk) with a follow up Gruul's Lair run. We had to Pug a few people, but that's how you make friends, right? lol. The only hiccup with Mag was that a lag spike caused him to get off most of his Blast Wave, but he was at about 10% when he started that, so we still downed him without a problem on our first try, albeit number of deaths though.

Then the majority wanted to go to Gruul's. Since I was the only mage, I figured I should stick around. We got another mage when a few people left after Mag, but he was still wearing Bloody Surgeon's Mitts, so not exactly up to par. He wasn't on Vent, so when I died the first time and I told him to try to pick up Krosh, he didn't do it. The second time I died, somebody had relayed the message to him, and he was trying to tank Krosh, and stole his shield before I could. He claims he didn't, but since I was on vent, and he wasn't... and I was leading the raid, I blamed him for that wipe. To be completely fair though... it was an alt toon. I'm just saying.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to glorify me in that this is the first time that I've tanked Krosh Firehand. Had a few pieces of PvP gear to get my stamina up. Got handed some Chewy Fel Taffy (which I didn't realize can stack up to 4 times) to make sure my Spell Steal wasn't resisted. And after a few times of awkward positioning, we killed High King Maulgar and his buddies.

We finished it off by slaughtering Gruul in like 4 growths or something like that. Yeah... the boss nerf bat hit hard.

Greed Before Honor

First thing: I finally got a group together to kill Magtheridon last night, so I finally got that title. It was mostly a guild effort, but I had to Pug a number of people as well. I tried my best to only use "guild contact", people that we knew or guilds we trusted, etc, but it just didn't work out. So, there I was spamming the LFG and trade channels.

I'd thank a number of people that helped out, but I'm sure I'd leave out names, so suffice it to give my public thanks... you know who you are.

At one point in my recruitment, we were a bit light on healers. A non-guild Ret Paladin by the name of Tenacioust told me that he had a healing set of 1900, but he didn't want to pay for a respec. Fine, whatever. If it means that I finally get my title, then I'll pay. So, I told him I'd give him 1/2 now and 1/2 after the raid. I knew I was taking a gamble. After he got the first 1/2, the guy says he has to restart his modem. Yeah... I knew he wasn't coming back. And sure enough, he didn't. I didn't bother saying anything over vent, I just didn't care. But publicly calling him out in cyberspace on my blog seemed about right. I also wrote him an in-game message telling him that that wasn't cool, and that he should send me the gold back. No, I don't expect he'll respond... too much of a snake. But still, I tried. Hopefully Karma will bite him in the butt. It's only 50g. Geesh, dude.

The run itself was pretty much flawless. Had a couple deaths here and there, but no wipes. 1-shotted Mag. It was a big success.

Then this morning while getting ready (both for the day and finishing packing for BlizzCon), I remembered what I was doing at this time before the last expansion. Wish I could remember the guys name, but I was running in pick-up raids with a few people, but I was following. Now I'm on the other side that I'm the one leading them. It's fun... putting my knowledge together to help put raids together. I had to explain how we do things. And it was fun that I knew the raids so well. (At one point, somebody asked if we needed more tanks because we didn't have 6 to take on all of the channelers. Umm... there's 5. And we had 3 tanks that at our gear level, was more than enough to hold the channelers.)

At any rate... the sucky part about pug raids is generally just the time it takes to get the number of people together. If you have a core group (our guild in this case), and get Pug's that are willing to listen, then you really just make them follow along and it's "easy". At least... Mag is easy. :)

Last note: taking off after work and heading straight over to Anaheim Convention center to pick up my BlizzCon pass. I'll see what I can do to steal Elinor's iPhone as much as possible to send lots of pics. I'm really a people watcher, so be prepared for that. lol.

Mag Title

Primogeniture stopped killing Magtheridon a long time ago. I can still remember the first night we killed him when I agreed with an officer that we should skip it that night. Oh, then there was the rebellion from another officer (how had gotten online late) and the rest of the guild that we should try it again. I don't know if it was the motivation factor or what, but that was the night we first took down Mag.

I never really got around to doing the rest of the quest chain for the quest to kill Mag while we were killing him. Lacked motivation. Had too many bad memories about normal Shadow Labs.... I don't know. But I eventually completed everything except for killing Mag.

Now that Wow 3.0.1 (or whatever number it will be) is staring us in the face, I'd really like to get that done. I feel a lot like Tatia, I guess. If it's anything like my pvp title... I'll probably never display it. But still... just the chance to have it. Just 1 Mag kill in a non-pug group. Is that too much to ask for? Well, time is running out. We'll see if we can get enough people online to get it done. Yeah... it's the pre-Wrath Blues.

New Mag and H-MrT

I think I may now be fighting an uphill battle with the name of Magister's Terrace. When at least 1/2 of my own guild calls it MgT, I know I'm in trouble. But being the GM, I should have complete control over everything they say and do, right? Yeah... that ain't happening.

Monday night I missed the raid because I was out in the area of the new house I spoke of. We started going out there at about quarter to 1 in the afternoon, and didn't get home until about 9:30. Yeah... it was a long day. But we do have a deposit down on the last model of this phase. Woo hoo! Funny thing is, about 2 minutes after we put down our deposit, another couple wanted to buy the property. Wow... that was close. House won't be completed until end of August though... so gotta figure out which bridge to live under for the summer.

But the report from the guild is that, sure enough, Magtheridon is much easier. Only one group of clickers is needed, and it's extremely easy, especially if you're used to what it was pre-2.4. Furthermore, he's become a real loot pinata. Drops the 20-slot bag, Pit Lord's Satchel and a Black Sack of Gems that contains Epic Gems. And he drops a ton of gold, so yeah... why wouldn't we kill him every week?

The trip into Void Reaver last night was a bit tricky for us. We didn't have a hunter, and we didn't have a pally tank for that first coridor. It just made things more interesting. And not having the Misdirect during Void Reaver meant some DPS pulled aggro a couple of times. /sigh. But again... not a huge concern. Tonight, we're going to try 4 tanks for Al'ar. Hopefully that added DPS slot will be enough do DPS down the embers fast enough and take down Al'ar.

So... Heroic Magisters' Terrace. It's really a lot like Alcatraz in that the Heroic and non-Heroic versions aren't all that much different. Kael has a Pyroblast on Heroic version, that you have to dps down this shield before you can interrupt him. And that's about it. Honestly, everything seemed to be about the same. Mobs just hit harder, but you'd expect that. So, if you find normal Magisters' Terrace to be a breeze, then just set it on heroic... really... it's not that much more challenging.

Rubik's Cube Masters

As I've said before, Primogeniture has been working on Mag's now for the past few weeks. I know it wasn't an issue of gear, but more of just raid coordination. So, an interesting thing happened last night.

I signed on about 30 minutes before we were to start to get some flasks made and assess who was online and signed up. I got a number of whispers basically saying that they didn't want to go to Mag's because there was really no need, especially since we all want a huge bucket of badges when the 2.4 badge gear comes out. (Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about.) I knew there was better loot other places, but for a lot of reasons (mostly centered around building a better guild), I wanted us to take down Magtheridon. But, I caved. I gave in to peer pressure, and I got everyone on Vent to announce that we would be running Kara for all the easy badges in there. (Due to time constraints, only 1 group cleared it this week.)

About 3/4 through my speech, another raid leader signed on (was having family aggro issues) and heard what I was proposing. She immediately starting asking why we were doing that and proposing that we should be in Mag's. She was followed up by a bunch of our guild members that have been in further progressed guilds, supporting her in the need to learn encounters and how to work as a team. An overwhelming number of people supported the Mag proposal, so that's what we did.

So, obviously got a way late start, but we made the best of it. Cleared the trash with no problems. Assigned clickers, and got to work. The first attempt, one of our clickers got DC'ed, and the replacement I called out was too far away with too little time to get into position. But we got him down to 79%. (Our record was 72%.)

The next time, we did the same strategy, but with hopefully no DC's that time. And Murphy's Law in effect, we had another clicker DC. This time, however, he was in the second group, and so we had about 2 minutes for him to get back online (as apposed to the 15 seconds for a replacement we had the first attempt). He got back, we clicked, and everything worked out through that. The 25-man group performed like a well-oiled machine. Got to phase 3, and we survived easily through that initial damage. Kept the cubes clicking, and downed Magtheridon.

It was such a great morale boost to know that everyone wanted to try Mag again, and then even further to take him down with only 2 shots. We got some good upgrades for people, but I was more satisfied with the simple fact that we worked as a team and conquered a fairly difficult task. Great job, Primogeniture. And thanks, Faytlynn for speaking up and telling us where to go. (In a good way. lol) See what happens when you give in to peer pressure? lol

Mag and Netherwing

It's Tuesday. And you know what time it is? No, not business time, you silly Flight of the Conchords fans. (Anyway, that's Wednesday.) That's right; it's time for the weekly update on the Magtheridon challenge. My whole goal last night was to have at least one Blast Wave interrupted successfully. Well, I would have been much happier if we had actually killed Mag, but I set my own personal goals for the raid in order to consider it progression. And we achieved that. In fact, we got a number of them under control and were able to get Mag down to 72%. We also had enough DPS that we could get 4 channelers down before we needed to get into position for the clicking of the cubes for the first Blast Nova. So, all in all, it was a great evening. With our later start time, we only get about 2 - 2.5 hours before, so that's basically attempts before the trash respawn. I think if we would have had one more attempt, we would have been able to at least get him to Phase 3, but possibly all the way killed. But, like I said, it was great progression. Great job, Primogeniture.

I have some pretty major stress issues with work, our house, and the next (and last) child on the way in about a month, so I logged off pretty quick after the raid to stress out think about some of these things. I tell you this only because I jumped back online to de-stress. And what do you do at 12 o'clock at night when you're not sure when you'll fall asleep from exhaustion? That's right! Dailies! So, I hearthed down to Shadowmoon to get a step closer to the Netherwing Exalted. Then I realized that I was only about 2000 rep away. A couple eggs and a couple dailies and I rode back to Shattrath in style:
And in case anyone wondered or cares... I chose the black one:Thanks to Tygamoon for helping me get my last egg. Cheers!

Magtheridon Down...

...to 93%. Oh sure, I'm sure there were some guilds somewhere out there that killed him. We just weren't one of those guilds.

It's taken awhile to build the guild back up and gear everyone up again. In fact, I believe it was September the last time we were actually in Mag's Lair. We officially have Gruul's Lair on farm status and have been downing them for over a month, so it's time we move on to something else. It still seems like there's a pretty big debate out there as to which boss you should take on after Gruul. It sounds like Mag, Lurker, and Loot Reaver are all pretty much on the same level. If you can kill one, you can kill them all.

My idea was to get Mag down so that we can do Gruul and Mag in one night and leave other nights available for SSC, and throwing Loot Reaver somewhere in there as well. And don't forget the fun times we have in ZA as well. :)

So... the last time we were in there (only once, mind you), it was a pretty big challenge. We decided to try it, kind of on a last minute decision. Nobody had really been in there. The raid leader that was running the raid had only 1/2 read or skimmed the strategy guides out there. Our first major obstacle was the trash. They cast a shadow volley, and we all just assumed that we had to split them up or that the rogues would somehow magically have this roundhouse kick that would interrupt everyone. For whatever reason, us mages didn't think to interrupt, and nobody told us to either. Then when we actually got the the chamber, we had our uber druid tank tanking 2 Channelers, because that's what we read in the strategies. But since it was only 1/2 read, it wasn't understood that one of those Channelers needed to be taken down first; we left those two for last. A number of the other raid leaders had tried to correct him at the time, but it was more a militaristic style back then, and he kind of ignored us. (I wasn't the GM at the time, and he's no longer raiding with us.)

Fast forward to last night. We had interrupts assigned to all the trash pulls. No issues there, and we ran right through. Took awhile to explain and answer questions (even though everyone should have read the strategies that we had posted on the forums). We had 5 tanks and everyone had their assignments for healing, tanking, DPS'ing and cube clicking. Before Mag was awake and active, we easily killed 3 of the Channelers. Then the trouble began.

I had forgotten to explain the earthquake. Okay, my bad there. But then after that, we had some healing issues. Those got resolved. We were progressing, each step, we got a little closer and did a little better. And then we got to our first official Blast Wave (where main tanks where still alive). I'm guessing that 6 people in 2 waves died because they held on to the cubes for too long. I think we got one Blast Wave interrupt but only after it has pulsed a couple times. We, as a group, just weren't getting it. But hey... it's new to most of us. We did better each time. And now we only have 63% to go until we get him to phase 3. :)

We'll probably be out of Kara again very soon. Last night's Kara group killed Maiden in 1:50, and Prince on the first shot in under 5. There's still a few upgrades for people here and there, but it's mostly just a collection of badges for primals at this point. Oh, and we're looking for Holy Paladins again if anyone knows one. Heh.

One-shots with a Side of Wipe Fest

After what seemed like miscommunication for our first wipe on High King Maulgar (and not counting that attempt), we 1-shotted both High King Maulgar and Gruul the Dragonkiller. Once again, one of the huge parts of these fights is simply understanding everything that goes on, and then using the strategy given. I'm convinced that if all 25 people were to go and read the same strategy guide some place, there would be minimal attempts (assuming sufficient gear, of course). We had 3 T-4 pieces go to 2 tanks, so that should help keep those guys alive. :)

Since all 25 people were already assembled, we thought it would be a good idea to head over to Magtheridon's Lair to see what he was all about. We had one person that has experience with Mag, so after reading the fights on Bosskillers and Wowwiki, we hoped that would be enough. It really wasn't.

There are 4 groups of 3 mobs that you have to kill before you engage in the main event. And while we didn't have to do a corpse run (SS, Self-Rez, and Devine Intervention ftw), it was pretty embarrassing. I didn't learn until this morning when I read about the trash on Wowwiki that I'm supposed to be one of the ones on top of interrupting the Shadow Bolt Volley. Well no wonder we kept getting nuked by those. /sigh

And while Mag himself can be done with 4 tanks, I'm not sure the Raid Leader understood about the whole getting stronger thing with the death of each Hellfire Channelers. We had our druid tank 2 of the channelers, the last two we planned to kill. Oh yeah, that's a noob mistake on that one. (Noob for the raid leader and all the people that didn't speak up about it.) So, we had Channelers running all over the place, and it was a fast wipe. For that attempt, we didn't have 2 of our stronger healers, and some people had to leave and so we had to call it after only one attempt. Of course, it felt like about 4 attempts after suffering through the trash. Well, now that I know a little more about the trash, hopefully it won't be so bad the next time we try it.

I ended the night by skilling up fishing a bit. Got about 20 skill points while talking to friends to hit 196. (Yeah, I'm behind in that quiet a bit.)