Vanguard Southern Armada Raids Week Thirty Five

24/10/03 Week Thirty Five

I cant wait for Aussie to move ahead to DayLight Savings time. At the moment I am 3 hours ahead of Australia, so Raids are starting 7PM AEST and they are 10PM NZ time. Now this isn't a problem, what's annoying is that my self imposed cutoff point for raiding (unless its a really special case) is 2.00AM. That gives me about 4h:45mins sleep before work. Any less than that and I start to get cranky. The extra hours difference in start times means I am usually able to hang around for 3 targets instead of two. That is one of the reasons these weekly missives have been a little shorter than usual. I am just not able to hang around as much.I was playing my baby tank for a bit when my phone started to go ballistic, the network alert systems were telling me about a rather nasty Viral outbreak happening in a regional office. So exactly as the raid was about to start I had to log off and race into work to deal with it. By the time I got back, SA had made an attempt on the Wise in the Elemental Plane of Water and was heading for the Plane of Fire.

This weeks quote of the week brought to you by GNOMESEKS(tm)

Translation of above image, this conversation occurs after the incoming message of our Gnome Warrior, no really, stop laughing, he's a Gnome and a Warrior, its not that funny!. Well actually it is I guess :)The incoming message runs along the lines of >Gnosie tells the Raid: "assist me on There
it is coming to us for Gnomeseks!"

Simis:Gnomeseks is illegal in some areas.
Gohann: As it should be Sim.
Simis: So the "assist" is lifting him into position or something?
Simis: I don't even want to think about it
Shinime: I think we should use him as a butt plug, that's gotta be high aggro.
Simis: Why?, do you want to bathe him?

Thanks for that Simis, that not only woke me up, that woke the whole house up as I howled with laughter!

So shortly after composing myself, Kez called the raid to the Elemental Plane of Fire for our first attempt at Fennin Ro, The Tyrant of Fire. This was our first shot at him as he's pretty much permanently dead on Prexus, every guild on their way through the Elementals camps him, its almost a rite of passage.

So we formed up at the "Picnic Tables" and began to pull and clear trash.

A Guardian of Doomfire

There is lots of trash, not as bad as the POE rings and its relatively easy to clear through. The Clerics were having a wee sleep, as the pulls seemed to go INC, Dead Tank, Dead Tank, Dead Cleric, Dead Cleric, Tanks gets aggro, CH rotation kicks in. Maybe it was an international Cleric Holiday or something. Maybe the beer was too warm again?. It seemed to go away after a while and the rotations kicked in beautifully. We worked through a bunch of trash and mini nameds before we came to the first "tough" guy.

Azobian the Darklord

Mr Darklord there fell over like a girl. This is where the extra hour of time I will get when Aussie goes to Daylight Savings is going to be great. At this point its 2.00AM, I know the engage on Fennin Ro, The Tyrant of Fire is only 30 minutes away, but I simply cannot afford to stay awake any longer, so I had to log at this point and head to bed. SA stayed for at least 2 full attempts at Fenin, both failed and I have no idea how the fights went but it was more an information gathering exercise than anything.

Thursdays raid was a blast!, we headed straight to the Ssraeshza Temple for a fast Emperor gankage. Kez saying "Bring me Snakes!" is still one of my favorite engage calls of all time! Watching the Blood and the Guards coming at you and not being able to do a thing except trust your Guild mates is such a buzz!

We dropped the Emperor in rapid fashion and headed out to the Plane of Tactics for another run at Rallos Zek the Warlord. After two defeats by him last week we were itching for a rematch!. We still didn't have a completely full raid but we were about ten to fifteen people up on last week, so our DPS levels were just a notch higher.

Apart from a few early hiccups with assistance, the first three kills were just about perfect. Even when we ended up with 4 adds in the middle of the Rallos Zek fight, just as he was about to split, the Chanter team stepped up, everyone kept their heads and we just smacked them all down.

Tallon Zek

Vallon Zek

Vallon Zek x2

Rallos Zek

Now I was tasked with gating out first to start the summoning of those who died during the final part of the fight with Rallos. I don't think we even lost one person prior to him but we lost quite a few to the adds.

So I gate out and get ready for summons, disband from group and raid and start saying "invite me for summons". Now for most people this is a fairly simple procedure, target me and press invite. For those who seem to have an issue with this procedure, these are the rules of Necromantic summoning.

1.You have to be in the same zone as me.
2. You have to be in the same group as me.
3. You have to be in the same raid as me.
4. I have to have a coffin for the correct level of the spell
5. You have to have a corpse in the zone where you want to be summoned.

If any of the above is NOT true I cannot help you. Inviting me to join you if you are out of a group, but still in the raid isn't going to help anyone.

All of the above must be true or you are wasting your time.So after doing a hell of a lot of summoning we headed into the pit. I stopped at the top and DMF'd those who didn't have Levi as they were dropping over the edge. I swear I actually cast DMF on someone and it landed as they were over the edge and falling into the pit. A 10K fall would have ruined your day.

Finally, pets in place, all spells replaced with DOT's, Pooby in place, alt tanks assigned, suicide slower's ready, Clerics GTG and Rallos Zek the Warlord is INCOMING!

Last weeks fights with Rallos felt really different to this one, last weeks were edge of the seat "can we do it?, can we do it?", for me this fight felt almost pre-ordained. There was no doubt we can kill him, our technique was perfect, all we needed was the additional DPS added by an extra 10 -15 people and Rallos Zek Fell over like a fat man.
Not only that, he was good enough to drop us another Blade of War!. Grats Nym on your new pig sticker!

I have to say it still feels really weird to be fighting these MOBs and raiding these zones. I still remember sitting and working my way through the Planes in Allakhazam.com and thinking these are MOB's I will never see, fights I will never participate in. Every now and again I just have to shake myself and remind myself that I do in fact get to do this on a regular basis, I do get to see MOB's and Zones that probably 95% of the player base never will, and that I am part of a team that nails stuff like Rallos Zek every week!. Woot!