Tidewalker Washed Away!

Serpentshrine Cavern, Zangarmarsh
April 30, 2008

This just in! Distant Beliefs has downed its third boss in SSC. On its first night ever facing the incredibly ugly Morogrim Tidewalker, Distant Beliefs has sent him to his watery grave. The members of the execution team were seen laughing over his dead body before heading off to make Leotheras the Blind its next target.

ZA Progression

Well, last night, we downed the first four bosses in ZA, anticipating returning tonight to work on the Hex Lord Malacrass. And work on him, we did. I lost track of our attempts, we had two druid healers and a holy pally. Two rogues, a dps warrior, a mage, a warlock, a shadow priest and a pally tank.


Finally, after several tries getting him down to anywhere from 12 to 30 percent, we killed him! He dropped Dagger of Bad Mojo and the Staff of Primal Fury. Deressy ended up with the staff, as the other druid had the (better) badge staff, and seven more badges (2 for the kill and 5 for the quest).

We took a couple of runs at Zul'Jin afterwards, with our best attempt of the 3 getting him down to 43%. Not bad for a first run at him, having done no real research.

Earlier in the evening, though, we decided to take a look at the Sunwell trash - just for fun. What disaster! Well, not completely...we cleared out 3 pulls worth and picked up 3 epic gems and got a nice bit of humble pie! It was fun though!

Positively Progressing!

As you may have read in my last post, lots of changes have happened recently in our guild. Hence, my long silence. Let me focus for now on our post-2.4 progress (it's easiest to remember).

*zul and I were mostly absent last week, though we did sub in on a couple of raids when we had freed up from our real life commitments and others needed to leave. Our guild has turned its focus to Al'ar, particularly since the changes to Void Reaver in 2.4. Besides, if we could down Al'ar, then we could stop having to reclear his trash every time we head into the instance. Last week, we made some solid progress...getting him to 9% (then he enraged and we all died), then 7%, then 6%, then 4.5%. This week, no questions asked, he was going to die!

However, Monday nights (the start of our official raid week), we cleared Gruul's then Mag and then some of us continued on for a full clear of Kara. This was actually my first time killing Mag (though my guild had done it before without me). Our Kara clear was the fastest ever (at least since we started timing it) - 2:27.

Last night, we headed into Al'ar with victory on our minds. We had gotten him lower than ever before and he simply wasn't going to live one more night. We also had fewer healers than ever before - down to 6 on this attempt (we have had as many as 8). We had a couple of botched attempts at first, but finally, with all but one of us standing at the end of the fight (although two battle rez's were used during the fight), Al'ar fell! Woot! We had FINALLY killed that annoying bird! And we still had lots of time left in the raid!

So what else but to head off to Solarian, who we had never killed before either! We had about two attempts, I think, while folks got used to what it looked like to "be the bomb". Incidentally, I was never the bomb - only the one who got blown up! On our third or fourth attempt (it's really a very easy fight), this happened:



Yay! That's two first kills in one night! And lots of DKP for Deressy! Nothing dropped that she wanted, but other folks got some nice loot!

And tonight you ask? What's on the agenda? Why...Kael, of course!

The Guild

I find it hardest to post when things are going badly. I suppose I should realize that part of being in the guild involves a bit of drama and certainly changes occurring. (Think "The Guild"). When I first joined my current guild (which I love by the way, even still), it was relatively small, but moving into 25-man content, so expanding. There appeared to be some resistance to the changes, but overall, we were progressing and many seemed happy.

Long story short, a small contingent (but with several core raiders) decided they couldn't live with the changes or direction or something and staged a "mass" exodus. Mass was about 14 players by the time it was all done, however, many were not raiders (or at least, not consistent raiders). In many cases, that would be the end of it, and it would be up to those that were left behind to continue and rebuild or to dissolve and go their own ways. Sadly, things aren't always so predictable.

One has to wonder the motivations of people when they intentionally spread false rumors, attempt to recruit as many members as possible (even those who have expressed no desire to come with them), claim members have applied (who haven't), and even relentlessly harass existing members in whisper. To me, it appears to go beyond simply being dissatisfied with a guild and moves more into vindictiveness.

The really good news, however, is that despite all the difficulties and the actions of a few, our guild is doing quite well and thriving. In fact, even though the walk-out was midweek and during our raiding schedule, we still went into the 25-man the very next day - and downed VoidReaver. More on that in another post!

Lurker Down

I find myself starting post after post, but then getting busy farming, raiding or just plain chatting with folks in my new guild, and hence I have many partially completed, but mostly abandoned, posts.

I'm going to aim for a bit less detail in order to get some updates on the site. On Wednesday, we made our first foray into SSC. We really beasted through the trash - very little problems at all. We were pretty shocked when, only moments after the first bobber hitting the pool, Lurker came flying out of the water - we had been prepared to wait even as long as 20 minutes. We made several attempts on Lurker, but it was taking us time to get down the timing of things and adapt to the fight. On our best attempt, we got him to... 2%. Dang, we should have had him :( He only had about 200,000 health left at that point. A couple more attempts, but folks were tired and we decided to hold off for the next night.

On Thursday we went back in - had trouble all the way in. Silly deaths on trash, really sloppy work. But we made it in to Lurker and got him down on about the third attempt. We had a few folks with us that had missed the night before, but all in all, it was really fun and a great way to end the week of raiding... almost.

It was too late to go start on Void Reaver, so a few of us decided to run Kara - a speed run through. Apparently this guild has pretty much always run 3 healers in kara. My friend Mondas (yay, he and Cianna were some of many that came over from Asgard recently) had put up a little challenge on our guild forums and got our MT really itching to try a run through with only two healers. Mondas and I went in. We had a great time - and full-cleared. It should have been in about 3 hours, but we had a couple of issues on Nightbane and it ended up being a 3.5 hour clear instead. Oh well, next time will be faster.

Karazhan

On Friday, November 30, Deressy headed into Kara for the first time....in a raid for the first time, completely clueless as to what to expect.

Fishbane, the guy who took her to Black Morass to finish her attunement, was the raid leader and main tank. The first few pulls were a bit shocking, as we worked our way in to Attumen. Despite all the scary stories I had heard about Kara, I was clearly in a group that knew what it was doing...Attumen down, Moroes down, Curator down.

Despite that I was brand new, and not even a member of the guild (yet), I got some nice loot to take home: Forest Wind Shoulderpads, Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation (for my dps set), Harbinger Bands, Ribbon of Sacrifice and the Signet of Unshakable Faith.

Saturday, we went back. Maiden down. We went to the opera and quickly finished off the Big Bad Wolf. Finished chess. We started on Nightbane but one of our healers had to go a bit early and another player kept getting disconnected.