Last night 25 Heroes from Heroes Inc ventured into the Gruul's Lair to face the High King Maulgar and his cohorts. It was a landmark raid as it was Heroes Inc.'s first 25 man raid. With everyone buffed and ready, we took on the 2 trash pulls with relative ease. Next we moved onto the big fight and after some explanations we tried the pull (after a false start with one of our hunter's learning how big the aggro range is :) ).
We wiped several times... I lost count... I think it was six times, maybe seven. We were learning/hammering out things like coordination, pull timing, boss placements, heal degrees, etc. I think there was some confusion and some people weren't paying as much attention as they could have but all-in-all we showed signs that we had the right pieces in place. Wipes were caused by things like not getting felhounds enslaved fast enough and put on Olm quick enough so someone else gets death coiled, or people standing too close to Krosh and getting AoE'ed to death, or other "minor" issues. I say minor because these things were easily correctable. A major issue, IMO, would be issues such as Krosh tank not having enough health, or HKM tank not having enough mitigation + survivability, or healers not being able to keep up with the damage tanks were taking. These kinds of issues wouldn't be easily fixed or overcome but those are the things that our raid leaders (Wichita and Ferth) made sure were taken care of already.
Eventually, everything fell into place and we downed each of the bosses and finally Maulgar. As each boss is taken down, the fight gets easier as more resources are available to move onto the next boss. We did have a number of people dead after Blindseye was taken down but a series of chain battle-rezzes (gogo Druids!) had everyone up and in the fight again in no time.
A big congrats to my guildmates on this accomplishment! It was our first 25 man raid and it was quite successful! Everyone hung in there and kept things light and spirits high until the job was done!! Congrats to Wichita and Nim on new T4 shoulders and Rhubarb on a new Ret hammer!
(BTW, I Lakini has a link posted to the movie he recorded of the fight. Check his blog by following the link on the right menu)
Let's hope interest is high enough that we can do this again in the near future!
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
+5 Staff of Groping
So a bit of catch up again...
Last Thursday I was in our Night #2 of Kara. Our targets were to pick up from where Group #1 left off and that was Curator. By now he's a standard fight for us and we downed him pretty quickly. Another Heroes member joins the ranks of Tier 4 with the gloves.
After that we cleared our way up to Aran. He posed some problems for us and we wiped twice before getting him down. Aran can be a bit like Prince in that there is some randomness that can make or break the fight. Aran was nuking our guys with low health in the middle of chaos (water elementals are out and he just did Blizzard on a few guys and then finishes up with Arcane Missiles on one of the guy hit by everything). This starts a chain reaction of losing people until the raid wipes. Oh and one time someone moved during Flame Wreath. No one knows who did it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was me... I'm not sure that I didn't turn my toon a slight pitch during that part because my hand was on my mouse and it's just a natural thing for me to do.
After Aran, we moved on to Illhoof. This was my first time facing him and although a bit chaotic, he seemed like a pretty easy and straightforward fight. The Terestian's Stranglestaff dropped and being the only feral druid in the raid made it mine by default. This was a nice upgrade from the Feral Staff of Lashing I was currently using for DPS although, I was a bit bummed that it can be easily replaced by the Merciless Gladiator's Maul from Season 2 Arenas.
Comparing the 2, the S2 Maul would yield around +191 AP and +0.42 Crit% more than the Stranglestaff.
The only thing the Stranglestaff has going for it over the S2 Maul is that the Maul is plain - almost boring. Whereas the Stranglestaff is literally a squid on a stick and with the tentacles all grasping and grabbing it has a certain cool factor the Maul lacks. I mean think of the fun that can be had in crowded places like the Auction House. All those people lined up facing the Auctioneers - you could reach out with your squidstick and let it grab some gal's butt and then put it away and look away (maybe at the ceiling) all innocent-like. Then she turns and slaps the guy beside her for being a perv - or maybe she fireballs him in the face! Or maybe she cheapshot->backstab->kidney shot->wtfpwns him! Imagine the possibilities!!
Last Thursday I was in our Night #2 of Kara. Our targets were to pick up from where Group #1 left off and that was Curator. By now he's a standard fight for us and we downed him pretty quickly. Another Heroes member joins the ranks of Tier 4 with the gloves.
After that we cleared our way up to Aran. He posed some problems for us and we wiped twice before getting him down. Aran can be a bit like Prince in that there is some randomness that can make or break the fight. Aran was nuking our guys with low health in the middle of chaos (water elementals are out and he just did Blizzard on a few guys and then finishes up with Arcane Missiles on one of the guy hit by everything). This starts a chain reaction of losing people until the raid wipes. Oh and one time someone moved during Flame Wreath. No one knows who did it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was me... I'm not sure that I didn't turn my toon a slight pitch during that part because my hand was on my mouse and it's just a natural thing for me to do.
After Aran, we moved on to Illhoof. This was my first time facing him and although a bit chaotic, he seemed like a pretty easy and straightforward fight. The Terestian's Stranglestaff dropped and being the only feral druid in the raid made it mine by default. This was a nice upgrade from the Feral Staff of Lashing I was currently using for DPS although, I was a bit bummed that it can be easily replaced by the Merciless Gladiator's Maul from Season 2 Arenas.
Comparing the 2, the S2 Maul would yield around +191 AP and +0.42 Crit% more than the Stranglestaff.
The only thing the Stranglestaff has going for it over the S2 Maul is that the Maul is plain - almost boring. Whereas the Stranglestaff is literally a squid on a stick and with the tentacles all grasping and grabbing it has a certain cool factor the Maul lacks. I mean think of the fun that can be had in crowded places like the Auction House. All those people lined up facing the Auctioneers - you could reach out with your squidstick and let it grab some gal's butt and then put it away and look away (maybe at the ceiling) all innocent-like. Then she turns and slaps the guy beside her for being a perv - or maybe she fireballs him in the face! Or maybe she cheapshot->backstab->kidney shot->wtfpwns him! Imagine the possibilities!!
Friday, November 2, 2007
And the Verdict Is...
Thanks to all the votes and comments. I took my warlock out for a spin and I have to say that while I'm completely n00b to it again and stand there trying to figure out what spell to cast or what to do when there are mobs beating on me, it was a lot of fun because I was grouped with others. Wichita's L34 Warlock, Baconstrip's L32 Enhancement Shammy, Rhubarb's L36 Feral Druid and my L33 Warlock were tearing up STV and that was a lot of fun.
Thinking about it afterwards, I have to say that my warlock synergizes (as Lou mentioned in his comments) with this group a lot better than I think a rogue would. A Shadow Priest would work but I'd have to powerlevel him to catch up and I just don't know that I'd enjoy it as much. With my lock (as compared to my druid), I have so many options now it's almost confusing.
Last night we were doing the Kurzon chain of quests in the north-eastern reaches of STV. The last step in the quest has you go into the caves where you need to take out Kurzon's guards and Kurzon himself, an elite. I think only Rhub's druid was the right level for the quest - the rest of us were under-level for it. However, we prevailed as a group even when the pull on Kurzon himself turned out quite messy. These mobs were orange to us and there were a lot of resists but no one panicked and we managed to get everything killed without any deaths (I think).
It was actually an interesting fight as Wich and I both used our succubi and tried to chain seduce 2 mobs. With the resists and adds we resorted to chain fearing mobs as well as trying to re-secude other ones and generally DoT and CC and survive. I ended up drain tanking a couple of the mobs for a while until Rhub could taunt them off me but this and the CC'ing provided enough buffer for our group to get the job done. This was so different from Wichita and my roles on our mains so it was neat. Normally he's dps/backup heal and I'm tank or dps and things like CC'ing are for others. In this case, neither of us could heal and our only options was to CC and DoT.
So, I think I'm sticking with the warlock for now. He synergizes well with our group. As it turns out there are quite a number of people with alts in their 30's so this group may get bigger than 5 people. This may lead to issues with grouping but we'll make it work. Most likely, not everyone will be on at the same time so hopefully we'll always have enough for a full group.
So far, it doesn't seem like any of us are in a rush to power level to 70 - which is good. Alts should be for fun and to reinvigorate us to play... maybe to discover something new. We don't need to speed these guys up to L70 to convolute our playtime and wonder who we should gear up and who we should raid with or PvP with. Right now, we'll just enjoy ourselves with old challenges, new dynamics and fun friends and experience the game from a new perspective.
Thinking about it afterwards, I have to say that my warlock synergizes (as Lou mentioned in his comments) with this group a lot better than I think a rogue would. A Shadow Priest would work but I'd have to powerlevel him to catch up and I just don't know that I'd enjoy it as much. With my lock (as compared to my druid), I have so many options now it's almost confusing.
Last night we were doing the Kurzon chain of quests in the north-eastern reaches of STV. The last step in the quest has you go into the caves where you need to take out Kurzon's guards and Kurzon himself, an elite. I think only Rhub's druid was the right level for the quest - the rest of us were under-level for it. However, we prevailed as a group even when the pull on Kurzon himself turned out quite messy. These mobs were orange to us and there were a lot of resists but no one panicked and we managed to get everything killed without any deaths (I think).
It was actually an interesting fight as Wich and I both used our succubi and tried to chain seduce 2 mobs. With the resists and adds we resorted to chain fearing mobs as well as trying to re-secude other ones and generally DoT and CC and survive. I ended up drain tanking a couple of the mobs for a while until Rhub could taunt them off me but this and the CC'ing provided enough buffer for our group to get the job done. This was so different from Wichita and my roles on our mains so it was neat. Normally he's dps/backup heal and I'm tank or dps and things like CC'ing are for others. In this case, neither of us could heal and our only options was to CC and DoT.
So, I think I'm sticking with the warlock for now. He synergizes well with our group. As it turns out there are quite a number of people with alts in their 30's so this group may get bigger than 5 people. This may lead to issues with grouping but we'll make it work. Most likely, not everyone will be on at the same time so hopefully we'll always have enough for a full group.
So far, it doesn't seem like any of us are in a rush to power level to 70 - which is good. Alts should be for fun and to reinvigorate us to play... maybe to discover something new. We don't need to speed these guys up to L70 to convolute our playtime and wonder who we should gear up and who we should raid with or PvP with. Right now, we'll just enjoy ourselves with old challenges, new dynamics and fun friends and experience the game from a new perspective.
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