Thursday, February 12, 2004

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifty One

12/02/04 Week FiftyOne
My first welcome back raid this week and of course its going to be Elemental Plane of Earth A rings and the Arbitor. However one good thing is that hopefully this will be the last Arbitor run we have to do. I think we now have pretty much everyone flagged for POEb so we can start to target the named's in there, and if they are up have a go at the Rathe Council.


I was in the middle of finishing off some trade skill combines (Baking 202 woot!) so I was a little delayed in reaching the Raid but I made it in time to help nail Tanitsala Jaggedtooth who was the first MOB to die.
It appeared that we only needed to drop one Ring in order to spawn the Arbitor so we quickly set up and started on the Dust ring. Dust Devotees died in their millions...
Then of course, the reason for all the killing of Devotee's popped and we quickly dropped the Triumverate of Soil and A Perfected Warder of Earth.
So finally the Mystical Arbitor of Earth spawns (I got a new key for his door Woot!) and we head down into his lair. We clear through all the trash and pull the Arbitor. As he is called inbound, all Bard songs are called off, Arbitor comes in and of course the swine AE's, then the bard resist goes back up. Too late I am now dotted with his sodding mana drain. I got one dot off on him and then was OOM for the rest of the fight.

It appears however that the Arbitor has a thing for Pooby. As you can see in the screenshot below after yelling "You will not evade me Pooby" and then summoning him he is reaching our for a wee hug. I think the Arbitor was feeling a little sad and lonely.
That was it for Earth. After everyone who needed to had hailed the PP we headed out and off to Tactics. Woot Rallos Zek!. I do like this fight, its a fast kill for us now and for me its still an exciting one. So we formed up and started the Trash Pulling. First up came Tallon Zek. Slow and sure dotting with LOTS's of FDing is the way with him. You do not want him to turn and face the casters.
Within minutes we had also killed big brother Vallon Zek.
Then its up into Rallos Zek's throne room and a fast fight to kill him and spawn the real Rallos.
Finally we set up for Rallos Zek the Warlord. Last time we failed on him with 55 as we didn't have enough DPS. (apparently, I don't think I was there) This time there was more than enough DPS and after one spawn of adds he died and kindly dropped another Blade of War for us. Damn this was fast. I think the whole fight from Zoning in to Tactics to killing Rallos Zek took about an hour max.
I know Gnome Warriors are just wrong, but Grats Gnosie on your new Blade of War!.
We still have a couple of Warriors who need Blade's of War so I am sure we will be doing Rallos a few more times yet!. That was it for Monday for me. Rallos died about 1:45AM and SA was headed off to hit Hydrotha in the Elemental Plane of Water. I figured that if I hung around for that I wouldnt be in bed till 3:00AM so I logged and headed off to sleepie BoBo's

This week has been the launch of the new Gates of Discord expansion so Im sure there will be patch on emergency patch. So when or if we will be able to raid again this week is at best dubious.

Well Thursday arrived and strangely enough we actually managed to avoid a patch. We had some nice fat Targets up, but the first on the list was Fennin Ro in the Elemental Plane of Fire. Its kind of an unspoken rule, you always have to drop a target twice to confirm that the first time wasn't just a complete fluke. Now since we nailed Fenin with such style the first time around, we not only had to drop him again, we had to do it with real Class as well.

I didn't really have me shit together during the beginning of the Raid as there was much stuff going on in the background, but as we cleared through the trash I managed to get a few shots of a couple of named's, unfortunately I also managed to miss quite a few.
In no particular order we nailed a bazillion Trash Mobs and :
Once we had all of those out of the way (and by the way where's the damn loot?, not even ONE random piece of PhatLewtz!. What's up with that!) we moved into the realm of Fennin proper and started to clear his Council of Fire.
Finally the big man himself, Fennin Ro, The Tyrant of Fire is INC. We even tanked him with a Pink Tank just to add to his injury and insult. Strangely, once again he completely failed to kill not only our MT (Woot go Nym!, tanking Fennin Ro, that HAS to be a buzz!) but he also failed to kill any Clerics.
So the Score is currently:
Southern Armada 2x Fennin Ro
Fennin Ro 2x Monk, 1x Enchanter.

Yes that's right. This time he got another Monk and a Chanter and that was it. Pussy.
Never mind we will give him another chance at a couple of our Tanks in the future. I'm sure he will appreciate it. If the heal chain falls asleep and the druids don't spot heal he may even get to kill one!

Next up we headed across to the Plane of Earth and started to clear the Mud Ring. This went relatively uneventfully and with no problems. Now for the last few weeks we seem to have had a plethora of Tank Lewtz, where's the Caster drops I say!. 

Even Xegony managed to drop 2 Tank Shoulders rather than the Vest we silk wearers so rightly deserve!.

I also completely failed to get any screen shots of the Mud Ring. Now there is in fact a good reason for this forgetting of screenies.

Last year I managed to put on a massive amount of weight (20kg) after I gave up smoking, so after much putzing about and prevarication, this year I joined the Gym. Thursdays raid night was my second day at the Gym and so on Thursday night I HURT. So I spent a lot of the raid wincing and trying to find any position at all that didn't hurt some muscle or tendon.

For this very reason I logged straight after the Mud ring. I couldn't even sit up I needed to lie down and rest and thus around 1:15AM I crawled, wincing and moaning to bed.

Next weeks update is one I have been thinking about for some time as it will be my one year anniversary of raiding with SA. Yup that's right, one year ago I moved my delicate DE ass from Karana, with my massive 2500 mana pool, my 1800 HP self buffed, missing every spell above 60 and little or no Raid experience. SA was just venturing into POP and considering gearing up towards the minor gods of the Planes.

A Year down the track we are 2 Elemental God Kills from the Plane of Time and the only thing currently stopping us is the availability of those Gods, not our inability to kill them.
So I have decided that next weeks update will contain something of a "Year in Review" as well as containing the usual bits of Raid information. Looking forward to it already arent you?!. Yup I could tell

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