Russta (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} russta) wrote,@ 2009-04-21 19:33:00 |
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It doesn't bend that way!
I'd be fibbing if I said the first week of Ulduar went precisely the way I had hoped.
Heroic
The first hiccup came in the obligatory server instability every patch I've ever played this game is plagued with. That, marred with some poor decision making made our first day a complete washout. It may not seem like much but losing that day of raiding on our schedule is about 30% of the week gone. We made the foolish decision to go to Emalon first expecting him to rollover and give us free T8.25, which, after Archavon, isn't exactly hard to understand. Well, with server instability and finding out that he requires some effort now, we lost over a quarter of that raid night. We went over to Ulduar upon finding out it was up and one shot Flame Leviathan once the servers had stopped playing up. We then wasted the rest of the night on an overtuned, bugged Ignis.
On the next night we decided to pass on Ignis and push down Razorscale. A suggestion was made that we put our Mages into each add team and sheep the Watcher. I thought this was a retarded idea and made my point clear that it would be far better to have a Rogue on each one to kick as many as they could. Once the adds were dealt with, it was handling people getting out of Devouring Flame the second it dropped. This is one of the few occasions in WotLK where I actually hoped for a mod to track something. While I was waiting for Sentinals to pop, I called out as many as I could so people could move ahead of time but it's pretty damn difficult as she targets the person for a split second before choosing somebody else for fireball. Once THAT was done, it was down to figuring out how to deal with fuse armor. This wasn't actually an aspect of the fight we were aware of so we were caught off guard by it. Calira attempted to taunt it but couldn't get it so either he got stiffed with resists or she was already enraged. Either way, once we had her back down in the ground phase ready to taunt off each other while moving her in a circle, the kill was easily in the bag.
Next up was Deconstructor who ate up the last hour of our raid. The first round of attempts was mostly people failing at moving out with the bombs. Our strategy at the time consisted of everyone clumping up, Light Bombs going left, Gravity Bombs going right. When we went back the next day, we kept wiping and wiping as the adds continued to sneak through and heal him, causing us to hit the enrage timer while he'd be at 2-3%. The strategy was (and I can't emphasize this word enough) slowly refined as we realized that just hoping the adds would somehow fall over on their way in wasn't the best way to do it. It didn't help that one of our Mages on add duty was trying desperately hard to redefine the word inept. I still think that we overcompensated for the adds as our kill was a zerg through a final 2% during his enrage. Even if that repeats again next week, we have a strategy formulated that works for us and shouldn't take nearly as long to kill.
Next day we moved to Kologarn. My ten man group had already killed him and was able to add a few caveats to the strategy Yunaris was outlining. I'd said that he was simple but not easy, though I didn't truly mean that. Even so, we killed him on the third pull in pretty epic circumstances which my poor ticker can't take anymore of. Screaming "KILL THE FUCKING LEFT ARM IT'S AT 2%" as attrition caught up to us was a nice prelude to a lot of laughter and glee on Ventrilo. It's something I'd hoped to instill into the community but we don't really get that often so I relished it. Our first fragment too, coupled with one of the new enchants which I promptly had put on my weapon. Cool ass glow effect, looks like your weapon is on fire, though I'll probably switch it over to Blade Ward as soon as it becomes readily available to me or when I get Titanguard.
In the next chapter of our success/failure leapfrogging chronicles, we spent the next two hours trying to pull Auriaya. We did manage a completely flawless pull once but we were so focused on just getting the pull right and had changed the area we initially went over the tactic in that it went to shit. From the video I watched, the fight is ridiculously easy and it's all about getting the pull right so if we assume that the fight isn't about the pull then maybe we didn't do as awful as I feel we did...?
Normal
For all intents and purposes, our ten man group went as well as I expected it to. We're great players who already out-gear the instance for all our specs and can pretty much put together any composition that works. On our first Friday of the place, we got down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor and Kologarn. I was pretty damn pleased but it was already known that Silinde and Rahla were coming to my house on Saturday through Sunday to play Rock Band all day and go see the Dragonball movie which meant our Saturday run of the place wasn't possible. The Tuesday raid, tonight, isn't going to happen either as Penelo has to work and BTB is having someone stick long pointy things in his mouth. So that's that for the week.
Assuming we get all three raids in, I'm aiming to be on Mimiron in ten man this week. Flame Leviathan isn't even a boss, Razorscale will pretty much be a one shot with the nerfs, Deconstructor is a joke in ten man and Kologarn was killed on the second attempt once I'd switched to Holy. I'd expect us to be at Iron Council and Auriaya by Friday if we start on time.
And on some non-Ulduar news, fishing was good to me this week. Damn good. Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat and Jeweled Fishing Pole two days apart on the new dailies, and, for 41 minutes of relentless school fishing...
I'd be fibbing if I said the first week of Ulduar went precisely the way I had hoped.
Heroic
The first hiccup came in the obligatory server instability every patch I've ever played this game is plagued with. That, marred with some poor decision making made our first day a complete washout. It may not seem like much but losing that day of raiding on our schedule is about 30% of the week gone. We made the foolish decision to go to Emalon first expecting him to rollover and give us free T8.25, which, after Archavon, isn't exactly hard to understand. Well, with server instability and finding out that he requires some effort now, we lost over a quarter of that raid night. We went over to Ulduar upon finding out it was up and one shot Flame Leviathan once the servers had stopped playing up. We then wasted the rest of the night on an overtuned, bugged Ignis.
On the next night we decided to pass on Ignis and push down Razorscale. A suggestion was made that we put our Mages into each add team and sheep the Watcher. I thought this was a retarded idea and made my point clear that it would be far better to have a Rogue on each one to kick as many as they could. Once the adds were dealt with, it was handling people getting out of Devouring Flame the second it dropped. This is one of the few occasions in WotLK where I actually hoped for a mod to track something. While I was waiting for Sentinals to pop, I called out as many as I could so people could move ahead of time but it's pretty damn difficult as she targets the person for a split second before choosing somebody else for fireball. Once THAT was done, it was down to figuring out how to deal with fuse armor. This wasn't actually an aspect of the fight we were aware of so we were caught off guard by it. Calira attempted to taunt it but couldn't get it so either he got stiffed with resists or she was already enraged. Either way, once we had her back down in the ground phase ready to taunt off each other while moving her in a circle, the kill was easily in the bag.
Next up was Deconstructor who ate up the last hour of our raid. The first round of attempts was mostly people failing at moving out with the bombs. Our strategy at the time consisted of everyone clumping up, Light Bombs going left, Gravity Bombs going right. When we went back the next day, we kept wiping and wiping as the adds continued to sneak through and heal him, causing us to hit the enrage timer while he'd be at 2-3%. The strategy was (and I can't emphasize this word enough) slowly refined as we realized that just hoping the adds would somehow fall over on their way in wasn't the best way to do it. It didn't help that one of our Mages on add duty was trying desperately hard to redefine the word inept. I still think that we overcompensated for the adds as our kill was a zerg through a final 2% during his enrage. Even if that repeats again next week, we have a strategy formulated that works for us and shouldn't take nearly as long to kill.
Next day we moved to Kologarn. My ten man group had already killed him and was able to add a few caveats to the strategy Yunaris was outlining. I'd said that he was simple but not easy, though I didn't truly mean that. Even so, we killed him on the third pull in pretty epic circumstances which my poor ticker can't take anymore of. Screaming "KILL THE FUCKING LEFT ARM IT'S AT 2%" as attrition caught up to us was a nice prelude to a lot of laughter and glee on Ventrilo. It's something I'd hoped to instill into the community but we don't really get that often so I relished it. Our first fragment too, coupled with one of the new enchants which I promptly had put on my weapon. Cool ass glow effect, looks like your weapon is on fire, though I'll probably switch it over to Blade Ward as soon as it becomes readily available to me or when I get Titanguard.
In the next chapter of our success/failure leapfrogging chronicles, we spent the next two hours trying to pull Auriaya. We did manage a completely flawless pull once but we were so focused on just getting the pull right and had changed the area we initially went over the tactic in that it went to shit. From the video I watched, the fight is ridiculously easy and it's all about getting the pull right so if we assume that the fight isn't about the pull then maybe we didn't do as awful as I feel we did...?
Normal
For all intents and purposes, our ten man group went as well as I expected it to. We're great players who already out-gear the instance for all our specs and can pretty much put together any composition that works. On our first Friday of the place, we got down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor and Kologarn. I was pretty damn pleased but it was already known that Silinde and Rahla were coming to my house on Saturday through Sunday to play Rock Band all day and go see the Dragonball movie which meant our Saturday run of the place wasn't possible. The Tuesday raid, tonight, isn't going to happen either as Penelo has to work and BTB is having someone stick long pointy things in his mouth. So that's that for the week.
Assuming we get all three raids in, I'm aiming to be on Mimiron in ten man this week. Flame Leviathan isn't even a boss, Razorscale will pretty much be a one shot with the nerfs, Deconstructor is a joke in ten man and Kologarn was killed on the second attempt once I'd switched to Holy. I'd expect us to be at Iron Council and Auriaya by Friday if we start on time.
And on some non-Ulduar news, fishing was good to me this week. Damn good. Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat and Jeweled Fishing Pole two days apart on the new dailies, and, for 41 minutes of relentless school fishing...
