Category: apotheosis

Teron Gorefiend – your ass is mine.

Kurn / / apotheosis, hunters, raiding, ramblings

So, my computer sucks. No, really. It does. It’s a laptop, integrated graphics card, etc. It sucks. To the point where if I’m the first on the constructs on Gorefiend, I will probably lag as I die and will miss the shackling of the constructs. I still lag when I’m not first, but at least others can help out at that point.

I have, therefore, been sitting myself out of this fight whenever we have enough healers to cover for me.

Sunday night, we had like, 10 healers online, so I sat myself and asked a couple people to alt or swap out and such.

They did six attempts with a couple of people DCing, a couple of people who had never attempted it, and then one of our mages (who lives in Malaysia with not the greatest internet connection ever) DCed again and finally, I had to swap him out. But who else was available? No one but myself. And on my HUNTER of all things, because we had enough healers.

So I macroed the spirit shackle, spirit lance and spirit volley spells to F1, F2 and F3 respectively, and went in, expecting to wipe the raid. As I have done in the past.

Well, our resident fury warrior had suggested to me that I bubble at the pull to ensure I’m not the first one marked for death. Lacking a bubble entirely as a hunter, I did what any hunter does when he or she doesn’t want to die. I feigned death right after the pull. And got back up after someone else got the shadow of death.

So I’m DPSing merrily away and noticing that the timer for the shadow of death is approaching 30 seconds on the first person who was marked. And that my Feign Death is similarly about to cool down.

As soon as FD cooled down, I feigned again.

And again, someone else got the Shadow of Death debuff.

Popped back up. More DPS. Feigned as soon as I could again.

This continued until Teron Gorefiend was at 25% and I stopped feigning and just poured on the DPS. In that fight, I used drums of battle twice, my trinket once, rapid fire once and beastial wrath once. And had a mana potion.

And didn’t die or wipe the raid. We killed him, our first-ever guild kill. And I was part of it on my hunter. And I wasn’t worthless.

It was hilarious. I was giggling with glee.

That said, bad timing might cause premature triggering of constructs in the raid, so I’ll try to continue to sit out, but at least I know I can help if I need to.

Ups and downs.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

I’ve (re)discovered that the life of a guild leader (be it GM, officer, class lead, what-have-you) is full of ups and downs.

Supremus down last Monday. I didn’t even get into the raid, because I had to go to my brother’s college graduation. So I got home and told the officers I was on standby… and they’re like “uh. Supremus down.”

Which, you know, is great. And I’m proud of them and I’m glad they could do it without me. I was called in after a pally had to go so there we went, clearing to Akama (we accidentally poked our noses into Gorefiend’s room first, oops) and gave it Shade of Akama a few tries before ultimately calling it. Good night, though. Progress!

Tuesday, it was back to Hyjal for some beating up of bosses, only we had a lot of trouble on Anetheron, which left me wanting to throttle most of the DPS, but eventually he went down and we went up and wiped on Kaz’rogal due to a bad initial pull on him. Meh, it was late, we called it.

Thursday… we cancelled. Because we had something like 10 cancellations and some “I may not be able to make it” type signups.

Then this Sunday was my mother’s birthday, so when I got home, they had just killed Azgalor. Again, a first kill without me there! I’m beginning to feel superfluous. ;)

Monday saw two tailors and a blacksmith hit honored with the Ashtongue Deathsworn as we killed Naj’entus and one-shotted Supremus and tried Shade of Akama a couple more times.

Don’t get me started on how we’re failing at “the chess event of Black Temple”. It’s the easy fights we have problems with. Lurker? Bitch and a half to learn. Vashj? Learned it quickly, took a while to execute, but ultimately, we got better just about every time we tried. All of Hyjal? Easy mode, thus far. (I have no illusions about Archimonde…) But BT is proving challenging for us. Naj’entus – people are killing others by not waiting for the heals to finish. Supremus – people are standing in fire. Shade of Akama – things are getting loose and eating mages and healers.

Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it also makes for one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

In other news, Season 4 comes out today. I don’t much care for my own toons, except that I put up 37 gems last night and have a ton of enchanting mats, so I might make a fair amount of cash over the next day or two.

Wow.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

We did it. We actually did it. We downed Vashj and cleared SSC on Monday, June 2nd, 2008.

http://files.filefront.com/apotheosis+vs+vashjavi/;10483306;/fileinfo.html

I HIGHLY recommend you download the full movie to your HD and watch it full-screen.

Notable moments:

4:40ish – Dayden (whose POV this is from) takes a second from tanking a Naga and hammer of wraths the leaked elemental.

East side had the first tainted, but I believe all three others were on the west. Go Toga and Mass and Kam!

7:00 – Phase 3 – enrage in 4 minutes. You’ll note the length of the video is 11:12. Hehe.

The pallies do a good job of keeping Blessing of Freedom up on the tanks, too!

8:50ish – You can start seeing sporebats, oh dear.

9:05ish – Warthon starts getting beat on and eventually goes down. In the span of three seconds: static charge from a nearby raid member, a swing, a shock blast… with very few heals because we were all chasing them around.

He gets a battle rez about 10 seconds after he dies… and the druid who rezzed him had static charge. 3 hits of that, bam, dead Warthon.

10:40ish – 15865 heal from Madrana. That’s me. Lay on Hands. It crit. And, according to the logs, only overhealed for 7%. Ahahaha! This is my favourite moment and makes up for me dying in the green goo shortly thereafter. Like, 12 seconds after. Popped my SS, jumped out of the goo… and died in the goo again.

Vashj down.

Over 70 wipes, over 35 different raiders, way too many hours to count…

But Vashj down. SSC cleared. WOOT.

For anyone curious as to our raid makeup:

Druids: 1 (Resto)

Hunters: 3 (2 BM, 1 MM)

Mages: 2 (2 Arc/Frost)

Paladins: 4 (3 Holy, 1 Prot)

Priests: 4 (1 Imp DS, 1 CoH, 2 Shadow.)

Rogues: 2 (2 Combat/Swords)

Shaman: 5 (! 2 Enh, 1 Ele, 2 Resto)

Warriors: 2 (1 prot, 1 fury)

Warlocks: 2 (2 0/21/40, Destro/Demo)

How we laid it out for Phase 2:

West side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 paladin healing. 1 warlock going over to help with spawns whenever a tainted spawned.

East side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 MM Hunter, 1 paladin healing.

North side: 1 Enh shammy (w/ poison cleansing totem down), 1 priest (Imp DS) healing.

South side: 1 fury warrior, 1 paladin healing.

NW Generator: Resto druid

NE Generator: Resto shammy

SW Generator: Resto shammy

SE Generator: CoH Priest

Center: 2 Tanks (1 warrior, 1 pally), 2 rogues, 1 enh shammy

Striders: 1 ele shammy (kiting), 2 mages, 2 warlocks (one peeling off for west if needed), 2 shadow priests (for blackout, mindflay)

Here’s the anonymous report from WWS:

http://wowwebstats.com/pk445h5rn1uv1?s=7673-8333

JC Vendor on PM, Rage Winterchill, Vashj.

Kurn / / apotheosis, jewelcrafting, raiding, ramblings

So, my 70 priest is on Proudmoore, which is the first of all servers to finish Phase 4 and open up the JC vendor.

First of all, I respect the majority of players on Proudmoore as smart, good players. But dude, what pricks most of them seem to be. Alliance ninjaing nodes of everything from other Alliance, the vile Trade chat… It makes me miss Eldre’Thalas, even with its noobs. But the opening of the JC vendor on Proudmoore was… I can’t even express how loathesome it was. There was the usual flagged, mounted Horde, of course, but it was the behaviour of the Alliance that boggled me. People in General were complaining and they’d get told to shut up, to hit Ctrl-V and click on the quest giver’s bar to turn in the quest, told that it’s not a big deal, that they’re noobs… How is this any way to treat the people of your own faction? World PVP, isn’t that supposed to rally people of the same faction together against the opposing?

Instead, Proudmoore’s Alliance was rude, obnoxious and, frankly, it was embarassing.

I hope other servers will show a little more respect in the insanity that is the inn when their JC vendors open up.

And speaking of the vendor… 15 badges a gem. Seems like the official armory is wrong. And yep, at neutral, each pattern is 50g a pop. That’s 47.50 at friendly, 45 at honored, 42.50 at revered and 40g a pop at exalted.

Which is a lot of money. It’s over 1500g for all the patterns at exalted.

Which is why I’m really glad my guild went to play with Hyjal trash last night. I wasn’t able to be there on time, due to RL stuff, and wasn’t even supposed to be there, but they were short people, so they went to Hyjal instead of TK. Which is fine. ’cause I logged on, got a ninja-invite, a ninja-summon (in between Rage waves) and an hour and a half later, Rage Winterchill is dead and everyone in the raid is friendly, even me.

Woot, woot, 74g spent for all the friendly recipes (5g70s apiece instead of 40g!) and some unexpected progression. It was a good night for the guild. :)

Tonight: Vashj. must. die. We got her to 1% last week. 40,000 health. We put 2 DPS on east and west, 1 DPS on north and south, 5 DPS on the striders and melee on naga/leaked elementals. It worked out really damn well, to be honest.

Well, that's new.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding

For the first time, we went into SSC and killed all five bosses in a single night. Until Tuesday, we always took 2 nights to clear those bosses.

What’s more, we one-shotted everything. Even Karathress, who we only killed for the third time. Even Leotheras, who we’ve been one-shotting for a couple of weeks, but only a handful of people died and we still had two minutes on the enrage timer.

Our plan was Lurker, Tidewalker and Karathress with Leo, if we had enough time. Well, not only did we have enough time, but we then decided to go finish off the place with Hydross.

Thursday night, Vashj. Possibly Sunday night, too. Then Monday in TK for a change of pace.

I’m sure there’s a connection between the Montreal Canadiens kicking ass and Apotheosis raiding well, but I can’t prove it scientifically.

Vashj to 49%!

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding

Ooooooooh, so close. I can feel it!

We’re really getting the hang of tossing cores around, alternating/splitting DPS on striders and naga and kiting the striders.

Dying isn’t usually our problem; usually one thing goes horribly awry (a netted/frozen strider eats the faces of three raiders, the server lags, someone doesn’t run away from a static charge) and then we’re screwed. But we’re getting there! I’m really excited to have gotten her to Phase 3 (technically, anyways).

We did 10 attempts on Vashj tonight and the 9th one was when the server lagged out horribly. We were all frozen in place and next thing you know, six people are down. More lag… and another 8 people are dead.

It was during this laggy time that one of our raiders said, quite astutely, “Vashj doesn’t lag,” which led to uproarious laughter on my part. One of the last people up was our resident elemental shammy who, due to server lag, appeared to be standing directly in front of Vashj, Vashj looking at her, aiming her bow at her and about ready to kill her. For about thirty seconds. It’s kind of funny, ’cause you KNOW the shammy’s going to die and, in fact, is probably already dead, because, after all, Vashj doesn’t lag, but we all waited with baited breath to see what would happen.

In the span of .8 seconds, once the lag spike ended, our beloved elemental shammy toppled over and Vashj reset and we all burst into laughter.

Sometimes… I really enjoy this game. :)

Lady Vashj.

Kurn / / apotheosis, general

My guild, Apotheosis, had its first few attempts on Lady Vashj last Thursday and I am up at this obscene hour (6:17am) trying to take the raiders who signed up and organize them into some sort of awesome killing machine by trying to figure out raid placement about 13.5 hours before the raid even starts.

We got her to 60% on two of our four attempts on Thursday and found that very encouraging. Elementals died quickly, but I’d allocated way too much DPS for them, so we were more than a little screwed on the nagas and no one really paid much attention to the Striders.

Without a warlock with Curse of Exhaustion, I’ve pretty much decided that our best hunter will be the kiter. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ve been joking when I’ve mentioned this, but oh no, I’m not. Distracting Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting and misdirects from our other hunter… well, we can definitely cross our fingers, can’t we? Given that we should have 7 tailors able to throw a net, 4-5 pallies to HoJ and a shadow priest mindflaying and (hopefully) blackouting, the hunter should do okay. With actual DPS assigned to the nagas, they shouldn’t be an issue either, and I’m hoping to see the start of Phase 3 during Sunday’s raid.

It’d be nice to have a fully-cleared SSC.