Everquest Southern Armada Raid Week Thirty Nine

20/11/03 Week Thirty Nine

Mondays raid kicked off with a fast jaunt to the Elemental Plane of Earth. There wasn't a hell of a lot up, in fact only one ring, Rock, but we persevered. Once again we pulled the spawns and just AOE'd them. Damn I love doing this, I load up my pathetic PB 155DD AOE spell, Word of Souls, get as close into the middle of the bunch as i can and nuke away merrily!. I think we calculated the first pull at about 30+ MOB's. We have two terms in SA for these pulls, the first is the standard we all know as "AOE", the second and more popular is "Killing Chanters".

All it takes is a couple of resists on stun and *splat* oops there goes a Chanter!. I knew there was a reason I didn't choose to play one 4 years ago *grin*

So once the fun stuff is done its back to the grind of pulling and snuffing red con's.

Finally we grab the named (which looks exactly like everything else in the Ring cycle) and beat him to a pulp as well. Ah well, it may be boring but the Lewtz is Phat Phat Phat!.

Peregrin Rockskull

That was about it for Earth, so then it was on to the Elemental Plane of Air. I never have a clue where the hell I'm going in this damn zone. Run here, run there, run around and backwards and sideways. I'm glad someone has a map, cause I am semi-perpetually lost. I'm fairly sure the first MOB we made it to was the Elemental Masterpiece. Not a hard kill, but he does hit like a truck. We actually got him with about 2 adds, Pooby went down in seconds, it took a while till people could get the healage together and the off tanks in place.

More running about, more clearing crap, more slogging through yard trash to get to Calebgrothiel. Again shouldn't he be in Fire?

I'm fairly sure I know why the air elementals are all confused. They are all wondering why two thirds of this zone uses exactly the same model. "Why do I look like all the Named's in this zone?, I want to be unique!"

Almost as an afterthought we smacked Queen Silandria in passing. I didn't even realize she was a named till Kez announced loot. Bit of a woos really, about as tough as a BOT wing boss named.

Finally we made it to the Avatar of Smoke. Once again we pulled him to Kez because Kez couldn't be bothered getting up, he was busy with Cybering or something. So being good guildies we brought the Avatar to him and then laid it at his feet.

I believe the raid continued on to Spider Isle. But at this point I was buggered and it was a little before 2am. So I figured I should be nice and take my leave before I got too heavily engaged in the next part of the raid. I believe they headed over to take on Sigismund but because I wasn't there (Good Luck Necro!) they failed.

This Wednesday, no mucking about we headed straight to the Elemental Plane of Air and zoned in. We started clearing trash straight up. I felt like this was the first serious POA raid we have done with definite targets and tactics in mind. We aimed for a number of Mini's, the Avatars of Dust and Mist and the nasty ass spider Sigismund. Now I know I have complained in the past (endlessly, yeah yeah I know) about the amount of crap you have to clear to do the Rings in the Elemental Plane of Earth. Well guess what, Air makes that look like a quick sweep.

There is just HUGE amounts of Yard Trash to clear through. The Chamberlain is close to zone in so he is always the first to die. For a "Trash" named he can be a nasty bastard and occasionally when we aren't"on" we have had trouble with him.

The Constable hangs about with the Chamberlain and they tend to die reasonably close together.

After hours and hours and hours of clearing crap we finally made our way to the first named of the evening, The Avatar of Dust. Now the last couple of times we have attempted Avatars we have moved to their locations. I think this time Kez decided "sod that, we have all the hard work of killing them, they should come to us." So the pull team simply brought him out to us on the bridge and we Ganked him. /Yawn these guys were tough once I'm sure *Grin*

Some time in here we also found the Avatar of Mist and sent him back to Xegony.

Then it was time for Spiders, I think next to the Rathe Council encounter the Spider island in Plane of Air is possibly the most hated in EQ. Now this was the same guy we had wiped against last week so we were out for revenge, and to prove that a woosy spider wasn't going to stop our crawl towards the Plane of Time. On the way we ran into Melernil Faal`Armanna, who seriously looks like he was on the way to the Plane of Fire and just got lost.

First we have to go through the spider clarence. Several hundreds of crystal spiders have to be cleaned out. Finally the trigger, A Vorladien Archwalker spawns, we nail him and kick off the ring.

Now there is a LOT of alcohol between me and last week so I am probably very very wrong about this time line, so for those expecting the Uber Leet Strats, go read the FOH boards. Hell I wouldn't know an Uber Leet Strat if it bit me in the ass, but I think three of the ArchWalkers spawn and have to be defeated, then finally you get Sigismund Windwalker.

Now the above pic is Sigismund on his way to kicking our asses. The first pull was called and he was THERE, no waiting, everyone got served at once. I somehow ended up on the Rampage list, even with Raid buffs I got hit 3 times, 1878, 2140ish, a proc of 3500dd and SPLAT, I was a faintly surprised smear on the tunnel wall. This spider is one hell of a nasty MOB, once again Kez resorted to the nasty symbol keys on the keyboard.

So there was a short delay for rezzing and rebuilding the raid, a couple of add's and repops to be cleared, a CH rota to be kicked off early, LOTS of warning to be given and Sigismund was inc again. Now there was a new motivational technique used by Kez for this pull. He said "If we don't get this right my Goldfish is going in the microwave". Wails were heard from the entire guild and much protesting, but Kez was adamant, do this right or the Goldfish is taking the long last swim down the flush cycle!.

This time Sigismund got splatted and we came off virtually unscathed. The rota worked perfectly and Pooby made rude gestures at the nasty Spider as it tried to beat him down, but we saved the Goldfish YAY!. I know its rather hard to see, but believe it or not there is a big dead spider in this pic. Grats us on a couple of Xegony keys!

That was the end of that Wednesday night. We wrapped up about 2:15AM and I headed off for beddie byes with the prospect of a trip to Aussie to meet the Real People of Southern Armada dangling before me on Friday.

Everquest Southern Armada Week Thirty Eight

14/11/03 Week Thirty Eight

Well another weeks raiding is gone, one more week closer to the AGM.and serious drinking. Come Friday evening I will be there! I actually had my first weekend that was completely EQ free this weekend. Mainly due to reasons beyond my control but I must say I quite enjoyed it, a change is as good as a rest as they say.

First up was Tuesday which was something of a mishmash of what the other guilds had left us. First up was Fire so it was off to ss1 we went. Not a hell of a lot up at the time, but what was there we were determined to kill. Ooo look a big Froggy! Lets Kill it!

Pyronis the Kermit of Fire

That was it for Fire. As a zone, Fire is usually clear simply because its the "loot wonderland" for the effort required to drop the MOB's. So its usually first on the list for clearance by any Guild capable of it. So once Fire was clear, we headed out to Water for a little Floaties killing. I hate Plane of Water, whoever designed it obviously did so on a very high end PC, directly linked to the Zone file server via Gigabit Nic with no-one else ever in the zone. As soon as you get 70 people in there for a raid, it turns into a lag fest. Even the usual trick of facing the wall doesn't help me at all in some parts of this zone.

First up was the traditional killing of Grioihin the Wise. I have no idea why, but I really like this fight. For some reason no matter how well we prep for it, it always turns messy as the mob will do something unpredictable and stuff up your strategy. I think that's the reason I find it usually a lot of fun!.

Next up is the lovely little Bloke known as Krziik the Mighty. We have killed him 3 or 4 times now and I still cannot tell you what he looks like. Below is a pic of Krziik during the fight, can you tell me what he looks like?. All I ever get is an impression of lots of armour plate and the Tanks saying *ouch* 'cause he hits so hard!.

Even Dead it is kind of hard to identify what the hell he actually looks like.

Next up was a wee trip out to Elemental Plane of Air. At this point it was getting kind of late, so after a mini named or two and while the raid was heading towards the Avatar of Dust, I logged and went and lay down for the evening.

Constable Alranderisan

The Final Raid of the week fell nicely on a Thursday, just in time for me to feel really shitty on a Friday morning!. Wasn't too bad tho, we had the boss back from his month long Holiday on Wednesday so the pressure finally started to ease a little.

There has been something of a debate going on on the Prexus Message Board about the merits of killing lower level content for the Twinks of high end raid guilds. It seems people were so busy bitching at each other they forgot to actually go raiding and left lots of lovelies up for us!.

First up was Fire, so a quick run to SS1 and we prepped and pulled. First up today was Blazzax the Omnifiend. For a MOB with such a foreboding name, he really is a bit of a wimp.

Blazzax

Blazzax just whetted our appetite for more. The Pull team decided that they were feeling a little frisky and pulled Arch Mage Yozanni to ss1. Now apparently the monk inter-server chat channel were claiming that not only was he impossible to pull to SS1 but that we were closely related to crazy to even attempt it. Once again the Southern Armada pull team stepped up and did the "impossible". Apparently after the kill the Monk chat channel simply couldn't believe we had done it!. /bow to the pull team.

So we pulled him, he came with Adds (2), Pooby tanked him and off tanks killed the others. Of course I am just about the other side of the zone trying to avoid his nasty Mana Drain AOE and waiting for the "AOE has passed" call. Saw the call, charged in to start casting and BAM there's his DOT. WTF?, so now I am dotted and losing mana at a massive rate. So I cast till I am OOM, just load him up with everything I can. Run back to the med spot, get a cure, move another 50' or so back out of his range and sit to med some mana back.

AOE is called again, guess what, I'm STILL in his AOE range!, fuckit, get another cure, run as far away from him as I can and still be in the zone and sit to med. Finally get some mana back, wait on the AOE call, find I am not in his range and charge in to lay some DOT's on him. Of course by now he's down to about 10% and I've done sod all to him. Ah well, better late than never, and now I know where the place to be out of range of his AOE is.

Next up was the relatively easy kill of Quavonis Firetail. He has this nasty ability to shadow step you around the zone (ask Nobby about that! *grin*), however he almost always ports you backwards, so make sure your back is to the wall and cast away!

Quavonis Firetail

Mr Firetail was also kind enough to drop an Elemental Silk Sleeve Pattern. The Guilds officers were kind enough to award that particular pattern to me!. To be honest I'm always kind of surprised when I do actually get given stuff and deeply grateful. Usually I send a tell and then continue with what I was doing, which is probably chatting. Sometimes it actually takes a second to register that that piece has been awarded to me and in one case I didn't even realize I had been awarded something till someone sent me a tell!.

After we ported out to Tranquility and headed to Water for the next kill I stopped off at the bank, got 2 swatches from the very kind Xardan (thanks mate!) and exchanged my pattern for a Miragul's Sleeves of the Risen Souls!.

Those sleeves have to go into the "omfg I don't believe I am actually wearing a piece of Elemental Armour!" category. Holy crap!, I have Elemental armor! wow!. Even thinking about it a week later I'm still slightly stunned. Hell I'm still slightly stunned every time we zone into an Elemental zone to kill a named! When it comes to Grioihin the Wise I get stunned about every time the AOE goes off, or at least it seems that way!.

Next up was our heavily armed, armored and scaled friend Krziik the Mighty. We actually moved down towards him to the lower part of the zone, but as you get lower into the Plane of Water zone, lag gets worse and worse. So thankfully they pulled us all a little further back or I doubt I could have engaged Mr Mighty at all.

Then, even deeper into PoW comes the big squid. Everytime I see Hydrotha all I can think is "mmm Calamari!". I must admit tho, he is kind of a nice break between Wise, Mighty and the MOB's further into the zone as he is a pure Melee Mob which makes him a little easier to take down.

Finally we have cleared enough of the zone to get to Ofossaa the Enlightened. This would be our first engagement against Ofossaa, he has a reputation as a mob that just wipes guilds hard and fast. Even time enabled guilds stay the hell away from him. However it had also been rumored that he had been "balanced" and was thus more in line with the rest of the zones mobs. So we prepped, Raid leaders gave us some info on him, buffed, took a deep breath and pulled!.

We had him at 14% when we wiped which is not damn bad for our first run at him!. I'm not sure why we wiped to be honest apart from his insane damage output, as I had been going Link Dead just about every 5 minutes for the last hour. This was my 9th LD and it also incorporated a 5 minute 1018 just for fun. So at this point, just about crying in frustration, I gave up and logged just as SA was reforming for a second try at him.

Everquest Southern Armada Week Thirty Seven

07/11/03 Week Thirty Seven

Yes I know I am a useless git for not updating faster. Ill tell you what, if someone wants to come here, take over either: Veritas backups, sorting out the crappy backup robot, managing EPO, updating EPO server and database to the latest version, managing security, managing other department heads, managing my staff, interfacing with the Domino mail admin and keeping him happy, managing virus outbreaks, deploying AV into regional offices that pop up out of nowhere after a virus outbreak, saying "please do it all for us", soothing users, dealing with idiots springing projects on me at the last minute, reading the massive amount of documentation I have to plow through at the moment just to come up to speed on the backup environment and just doing all the general crap that comes with supporting users and the idiots we laughingly refer to as "Helpdesk". Take over any of that and I will update a hell of a lot faster I promise.

I had to do some fast talking and a hell of a lot of work to get my trip to the Bay of Plenty changed from Tues/Wed to Mon/Tues. Then when I got down there I had to do even more work to get everything I had to do done in time to get back on Tuesday for raid night. Damn this EQ Stuff is hard work!.

So we are going to kick off with a quote from the (these days) highly elusive Hilly beast.

This little gem popped up during a discussion on how mentally deficient Warriors are. I'm not sure how it ended up on Monks, but Hilly pretty much captures the essence of "Monk" perfectly there !.

First up Tuesday night was the Elemental Plane of Earth.for another Run at the Arbitor. To be honest the POE runs are now so fast, so confusing ( and to be honest so buggy ) that a lot of the time I have no idea what is going on or what part of which ring we are pulling. Large chunks of the early parts of these rings we now AOE pull. To those who have doubted that SA AOE's to clear level 60+ trash in POE here is a picture for ya!

Immediately following the AOE ring clearing, which is a hell of a lot of fun, comes Rockskull.

Dumb as a rock (of course) he charges in and goes *SPLAT* against the solid wall that is SA.

There was a butt load of other targets being killed during this time and not a whole lot to differentiate them. Basically I saw "assist on TARGET" for about 3 hours. In fact it felt a lot like the Bertoxxulous ring, there was always MOB's in camp, usually more than one, there was always more MOB's on the way and I spent most of the time facing the wall.

We seemed to move about the zone a bit and multiple rings seemed to often be being pulled at once. I think at one point we were pulling both the Ring of Mud and the Ring of Dust at the same time.

A Sludge Lurker

Muddites

A Monstrous Mudwalker

A Perfected Warder of Earth

Finally we moved off to kill what my GF refers to as the "Coat and Shoes MOB." She like's to be called when we engage, so she can watch the Croc die and fantasize about all the shoes and handbags she could get out of him!

Tantisala Jaggedtooth
.

Finally for this raid we headed into a spot we had only been once before but this time we were determined to get us some new Flaggage! First up we cleared the nasty trash that spawns around the Arbitor.

A Gemmed Guardian

This time we cleared through the spawns and charged him in his room. Without the adds that we got from Re-spawn last week, he is a gimp and he went down fast before the might of Southern Armada. Ding Woot! Welcome to Ragrax, Stronghold of the Twelve!.

A Mystical Arbitor of Earth

That was it for the night and much satisfied I logged at about 1.45am or so.

After such a good nights raiding on Tuesday I was looking forward to another great raid Thursday. For some reason, SA can put on a show of might and skill unmatched by just about anyone else on the server one day, the next day we are making Newb mistakes that would get us kicked off a ToV raid. I have no idea why, but if you are going to start to fuck up, attacking Fenin Ro in the Plane of Fire is really not the place to start. Kez was so pissed off after an hour or two of it he threatened to log, that's something I've never seen him do before.

Now this update is being written a good week or two after the fact due to the constraints of being insanely busy at work, its slowed down a little now so I am able to update. I had to ask Anobis (Gnomes, Just say NO!) for the timeline of some of the events so all faults are completely his, not mine cause I am perfect.

This Fridays run was basically one giant tilt at the Elemental Plane of Fire. We zoned in and headed immediately to what is colloquially known as "the picnic tables". We formed up for a go at the ArchMage. Now, like the Spider Bitch Babnoxis, this guy has a really nasty AOE mana drain dot. Now when you drain my mana I am pretty much utterly useless so MOB's that mana drain I particularly hate. We tried something a little different in the way of positioning and where we hid the casters to avoid this dot.

Unfortunately it really didn't work, I was hit with the dot on the pull and after casting a BOT, FP and an SK I was OOM and the MOB was only at about 85%.

At about 40% I then saw a call that I haven't seen since a ToV raid back on Karana; "Camp the Clerics". That was kind of a shock I must admit. But damn it, it was the right call. Clerics camped out, we took the wipe, reformed, made some adjustments to Pull locations, sorted out an effective AOE call and Mr Yozanni was inc again.

This time we ganked the bastard and kind of wondered how we could have made it look so hard the last time. As an encore we pulled and killed Magmaton thus confirming that he too is well and truly on the farm list.

Then Kez called us forward to begin Fenin, woot! a MOB I have never seen! a new and completely interesting encounter!. We pulled the trigger and began to clear through the (inevitable) endless amounts of Yard Trash.

A Yard Trash

ooo look another one!

During all of this Kez took up his usual position as sacrificial lamb and designated PhatLewtz Sacrifice and in fact ended up taking several for the team!. It was also at this point he got a little testy as people where pissing about for some reason. We had lots and lots of deaths from MT's, Clerics, OffTanks etc etc. People just weren't paying attention it seemed to me, and in a place like the Elemental Plane of Fire, if you didn't bring it, you may as well just fuck off home cause you will just get beaten like a punk.

So after a bit of abuse and some screaming and the use of the symbol keys on the key board from Kez and the raid leaders, we finally began to get our act together. Things slowly began to become a lot smoother to the point that we ended up using Pets to tank and just getting Druids to heal them while the Clerics and Warriors lounged about in the sun with their feet up,

In no particular order (Mainly cause I cannot for the life of me remember the actual order of the pulls) we smacked:

Azobian the Darklord

Javonn the Overlord

Hebabbilys the Ragelord

Warlord Prollaz

Reaxnous the Chaoslord

Chancellor Kirta

Chancellor Traxom

Any omissions or any incorrect entries are entirely the fault of the Gnome as he told me to do it. Now the only MOB who even vaguely got frisky was Warlord Prollaz who decided to lay down the challenge.

We just killed him slow for that.

Finally after killing through the endless trash and sameness, its sort of like XP grinding really, you know you have to do it, and you know as you get better at it and more powerful it will all go a lot faster, but that doesn't make it any less painful, we made it to the Temple of Fenin Ro himself.

We formed up on the wall and pulled out the Omni Magus Crato for his share of the smack down.

This guy is HUGE, Pooby only just came up to the top of his ankles. At this point the next mob was Fenin Ro, so we put our game faces on and the Pull Team called "Fenin Ro INC"

Fennin Ro, The Tyrant of Fire

Fenin is a cool looking MOB, he really is a fabulous model. I think the mace is a little ghey but beyond that he is well impressive. He also managed to wipe us before he even hit 80%.

So we "Camped Clerics" for the second time that night, reformed, rebuffed and Pulled again.

SMACK Fenin laid the beat down on us a little faster for the second attempt. This time the reform was a little slower, it was getting later, a few people logged, a few more made it to the raid late and I suspect a lot of debate was going on inside the officers channel as to appropriate tactics. My guess (and I am an amateur at this compared to many) is that we had two problems. This mob is largely a MOB you need high range damage DPS against as he has insane rampage damage. Any Tank that's not the MT with a fast CH chain on him, that goes near him just gets splatted.

Unfortunately that night we only had 2-3 Rangers on the raid, so a significant part of our ranged DPS was missing. Another large part of our ranged DPS is the 10+ regular Necro raiders. Unfortunately Fenin is HIGHLY Poison and Disease resistant and of course Fire immune. The only spell any of us could land that can do significant damage to him is Horror. Of 10-12 Necro's on the raid only 1 of us has Horror. The rest are reduced to Splurt and SK, so there to was another massive cut down in our DPS.

So we are already reduced in our sheer damage output, add to that the fact that at one point we only had 6-8 Clerics online, tho this number fluctuated during the night, and we were well short of Healing power as well. Fenin Ro strikes me a lot like Rydda'dar in that the fight is all about fast, heavy Healing, MT getting aggro and then just burning the fucker down as fast as you possibly can. A few more Clerics in the Chain, a few more Druids and Shammies etc for fast spot healing, a few more Rangers for DPS, a few more Necro's with Horror and he will die with no issues.

As it was, Pull.....

After the rezzes Kez asked us to dig in and give him one more try. For the Sydney-siders I guess it it was about 12:30am at this point, for me it was around 2:30am and I was just about asleep at the keyboard. But I took a big swig of Rum and Coke, propped my eyelids open and steeled myself for another go. This time the sorting of the pull took even longer and Kez completely changed the tactics for the engage. I don't remember exactly what percent we wiped at but it was definitely our best effort of the evening thus far. The changes to tactics definitely improved things and I have no doubt Fenin with fall to us soon.

Fenin is the first MOB to have just stopped us in our tracks for a very long time. Not even Rallos Zek managed that.

After Rezzes, it was about 3:00am and time for me to fade away. The remaining updates will be coming hard on the heels of this one, so keep your eye's peeled this week as we have had a great few days of raiding recently!