Well the week started off Monday night with a relatively relaxed and mellow named killing in Bastion Of Thunder. We were already in the Bastion doing some XP'ing and Gara noted that 3 of the 4 named's were up (Yay Tracking!) he dropped out of the XP group to set up a named killing group. Once the named group was setup I dropped out to join them. First up was Gaukr Sandstorm in Deep South.
After him we invis'd over to Hreidar Lynhillig's house and prepped for him. He knew we had a Pally tanking for us so his back was to the wall from the beginning!.
He put up a good fight, but eventually he gave up and went and stood in the corner like the bad little boy he was. Trying to hide didn't do him any good tho, he died and gave up a Rune!.
Third but not least was Laef Windfall. He gave it up like the girly man he looks like. Prancing round in just a Toga!, he deserves to die!, pervert.
Tuesday was raid day and I was looking forward to it, hoping like hell that we would get another shot at RD. Of course at 4.00PM the companies Gateway fax server fell over. At 4.05PM a server was dumped on my desk and I was told it needed to be built by 6.00PM. Basically this server accounts for 100K$ a day in revenue for the company so it MUST be up and functioning. I got it built by 6.00PM but had to hang out to help with the re-build and configure process. So I didn't get home till about 11.00PM. I did some quick factioning with the GF and logged on.
ALT-G showed me the guild was in Halls of Honor, woot A chance at Rydda'Dar!. I asked in /GU if there was still time to get there and was told, there was. Off to HoH for some Dragon Hunting!. Now we have recently had a few server transfers from The Hand guild on Xev (Welcome Guys!) and we had a couple of people from Unity there, so we had about 10 or so people more than we would normally have had at an attempt at RD.
This Dragon has only been successfully killed on Prexus by 4 other guilds, all of whom are well ahead of us in the race to the Elementals. So for Southern Armada not only was this Revenge, it was a BIG step up. If you haven't guessed by now, not only did we kill him, he was pwnt!
Incoming!
Kiss My Ass Dead Fat Dragon!
And to really rub it in, a close up...
After much rubbing it in, self congratulation and division of PhatLewtz and everyone getting our flags, we headed to the Plane of Innovation and the Manaetic Behemoth to do a bit of back flagging. Behemoth was the old roadblock for us, now we move in and just Nuke him hard and fast. We seem to have a bit of a problem with the post Behemoth spidey control tho as a whole bunch of nasty ass spideys got into his room and went Boom!.
So now all we gotta do is nail Rydda'Dar again to prove it wasn't just a fluke and to backflag those who missed this raid. Once we have done that we will be taking a little visit to the Temple of Marr, where Lord Mithaniel Marr is going to get a Beating!.
During the course of last week I was also awarded a Sharp Claw Ahlspiess which is a nice replacement for my Ceramic Gavel of Justice. The Gavel was a loaner from Neulaelae and so I had to return it rather than hand it in to the guild. I also managed to be awarded a copy of Word of Terris. One little bit iof a rant. I am very happy to have this spell in much the same way I would be very happy to have GDMF. Its not a spell I will probably ever use, but its nice cause it fills out missing spells from my spell book.
This spell is a classic example of the developers at SOE simply not playing the same game as the rest of us. During the recent nerf of charm all the classes charm spells had their resist levels massively reduced as well as the experience gained from using such spells to kill MOB's. Effectively this was a Necromancer nerf. Ah! I hear you say, here comes a typical Necromancer whine!, yet hear me out.
All other charming classes have some form of debuff which enables them to effectively lower the resistance's of any mob they wish to charm. All classes except the Necro. We do not have a useable debuff that would land on any mob we would be likely to actually use this spell on. After the nerf you still see Druids and Chanters charming mobs and then using them to kill other MOBs all over the place. Necro's?, nah, for us this spell is un useable unless the MOB is debuffed by another class first, and even then it breaks fast and alot.
If they didn't want people using this spell to solo and gain fast AA's, all they needed to do was to reduce the XP related to solo use of said spell, in typical SOE fashion they went completely over the top and nerfed the spell into essential uselessness. Grats the back of my spell book.
Ah well, that means I am now only looking for the two spells I actually do want, Blood of Thule and my 65 Pet!. Actually the pet is a better example of the lack of thought that SOE uses when it comes to EQ. They say they want people to group rather than solo, yet by adding a 12 pt DS to the 65 pet they have effectively aided the soloists and farmers without helping grouping Necro's one bit. How the hell is a 12pt DS going to help my pet in POP?. If my pet becomes the focus of any thing's attention in any POP zone it will last about 2 ticks, 12 seconds or so. And no 12 point DS is going to help it one bit.
Yet this same 65 pet, the absolute penultimate Necromancer pet in the game, hits at the same frequency, for the same amount, with the same atk level as the 61 pet. To all intents and purposes it IS the 61 pet. But now it has a 12 point DS. I ask you, why do they even fucking bother?. They were doing a great job of ignoring the Necromancer communities proofs that the 65 pet was sub standard, just like they did the 59 pet for near 2 years. I still really want this pet, why?. Because. As I said above, it is the Necromancer's ultimate pet!
If they seriously wanted to do something to upgrade the pet it was an easy fix. Give it the same damage as the 63 pet does from the rear, but from any angle. So the pet progression would look more like 61=Warrior ( good if you do need tankage) 63= Rogue (good for groups) 65=Monk (Good for raids and for groups due to decent HP, AC, resist and sheer DPS, still not useable to solo tank with in POP). Its really not fucking rocket science.
Friday was one of those raids where you look back on it afterwards and think "Now thats why I moved to Prexus and joined Southern Armada". We started out with a quick Shei kill in Akheva Ruins just to get the blood pumping.
I remember seeing the stats on a Flowing Gossamer Cloak back when I was on Karana. I never ever believed I would one day own one!. Yup Shei was kind enough top let me have it from his broken and bleeding body!. On the way in Xardan was also kind enough to let me have my Pet!. I really really appreciate that, because I know how much that particular spell still sells for on Prexus and I know what he passed up to give it to me. /bow Xardan, thank you mate.
From Shei it was onto Halls of Honor for another shot at Rydda'Dar. Now I was a little apprehensive about this kill, we had done it once, could we do it again?, or was the first time round just a fluke?. I needn't have worried. Not only did we nail that fat Dragon bastard, we did it with STYLE!.
After that there was some Villagers needed rescuing. Much like the Princess it is my opinion that these villagers must be particularly stupid as they do seem to need rescuing. a lot!.
First ya kill this guy...
Then a whole lot of these guys spawn...
once you have killed all of them, then a named spawns, kill him and Voila! a flag!.
At this point it was getting fairly late and people were beginning to get tired. It was getting on to Midnight for me as well, but its Friday and its raid night so I don't care!. The GF has long gone to bed and its just me and the Raid out killing stuff. So we figured lets go kill us some Zeks!, Yup both of them up at the same time!.
So off to Plane of Tactics, form up, race in, engage, *sigh* well I lasted 20 seconds against Tallon this time. People are even warning the Raid, stay away from Ulaa!. I have survived one damn fight against the bugger, I think I'll just Nuke from now on.
Next up was big brother Vallon, everybody was home tonight!. Vallon is a fun fight, I always enjoy it cause its an in your face sort of fight. To me its a good test of a guilds discipline, because its in such a tight area its a kind of one slip and your Raid is dead type of fight.
Vallon Zek preparing to engage
Vallon Zek trying to cheat and bring his buddies!
The result of cheating!
I know the pics are shite but its dark in that damn room!.At this point a lot of people left, I was still hyped so i stayed and we headed down into the dungeons of Tactics to kill a mob I've never seen!. Zone into Tactics, drop down into the pit, kill a lot of nasty mobs...
and finally you get to a big room that I think is supposed to be an armory. I don't know if it is, but there was a lot of this stuff hanging around the walls of the room...
Damn if only the armour on my froggy twink looked half as good as that!!. Oh well. One thing that does suck, around this room are scattered a bunch of NPC's who are Non-KOS to everyone, unless you have some sort of illusion up. If you have any kind of illusion form on you they will attack. NOOOOOOOOO!!, damn it no Seduction of Saryn! All the Necro's in the raid were spitting tacks in Necro channel, we HATED not having SoS up!. We all felt like Wizzies having to rely on KEI and VOQ, it sucked ass.
Oh well Targrin Maldric died anyway...
and on the way out so did his pal Glykus Helmir.
I may be a bit confused as to who/what we were killing at this point. There was a lot of whiskey and it was about 2.30AM, so if I am wrong, let me know. One last thing, quick update I know but its been a hell week at work. I REALLY want one of these pets!!
