13/03/04 Week
FiftySix
And lo the
LewtGods said "You have Sacrificed many Pallies, many Warriors,
Clerics and Monks. Shadow Knights, Necro's and Rangers, all have
fallen in the pursuit of the Rathe Council. So just for you, here
is another shot at it."
Yup
once again we lined up in the Plane of Earth and once again we
prepped ourselves for smacking our heads against the brick wall
that is the Rathe Council. I am not surprised that Guilds have
broken up over this encounter. Its a nasty evil Encounter and
I would like to beat the man who invented it. Massive Kudos to
those guilds who had to do it pre the "balancing" that
SOE did.
The frustration
levels when the RC was impossible to beat must have been enormous.
I can now understand all the ranting on the uber guild message
boards.
We warmed up
with a couple of kills in the Plane
of Fire as we waited for people to log on. First to die was
Criare
Sunmane. I thought maybe we were a little light as we engaged
with only about 40 people online. But it was obviously the right
mix of people as we just nailed it.
Next
up was a MOB we don't get to see that often. Arch
Mage Yozanni caused the usual running in and out amongst the
AOE waves. I got caught by one after misreading an AOE call, but
it got cured pretty fast and I was fine to lay the smackdown in
my own Necroish fashion.
I
do love the Lich line of spells, without it Yozanni's mana drain
DOT would have chewed through my mana and left my mana pool bare.
Having to rely on the evil VOQ *shudder* is not something I would
enjoy. I would love to see the new GOD upgrade of the Lich line
but the way SOE has structured the spell drops and the methods
and devices of getting into the new zones,
I really doubt I will
ever see one.
I
have to say, although technically SA is one of the Guilds or close
to being one of the Guilds that GOD was structured for, I'm really
not impressed. XP zones that you REQUIRE a 10K+ 2200AC Warrior.
That's just not fun because those Warriors aren't just hanging
off tree's, they are damn rare. Maybe after we spend a few weeks
farming Time, 10K Tanks will become more common, I don't know.
That
was it for Fire. Suddenly, we had a flood of people coming online
so the raid was hurriedly called to POEb
to take advantage of the fact. We set up and began the pulls.
Kez and the Officers explained the strat all over again, but largely
I think they realized the bulk of us knew it by now.
Some of the
strats were mildly changed from last time, just to iron out the
last few wrinkles and suddenly we were good to go!. Now I'm fairly
sure that I am not going to be giving away anything uber sekret
in the line of SA strats in the following write up. If I am someone
please tell me!.
The
10 or so Necro's online designated a single stay behind to hang
with the chanters and stay in their channel. That person was to
make sure the Chanters had enough mana and if needed call for
dumps from the rest of the Necro's. The rest of us formed a roving
band to both do as much DPS as we could (Limited to Touch of Mujaki
only, not allowed to use DOT's and Neurotoxin is way to heavily
resisted and mitigated) and to mana dump where called to by the
heal groups.
Normally we would be battle rezzing as well but it
wasn't needed this time. We
pulled, 1, then 2, then 3 and in a rush 4, 5, 6. the Chanters
had the mezzables under control. I think we got a bit cocky early
on as we took 2 of the mezzables to 0% before mezzing. That is
cutting it a little too close!.
So
with the Chanters going insane dealing with the Rathe Council
we began to pull the tankables. 7, 8, 9, 10 we got set up and
in place. 11 was inc and being tanked and the countdown was on.
Then it went wrong. Slowers were getting ganked on slow attempt,
no Warrior had /DEF up, healers were dieing left and right. I
got summoned and splatted. Then Kez called for all Tank Mez to
die and to allow the killer mob to reset.
So
after a massive drag/rez effort we were backup and in place. I
really didn't know if we were going to be able to do it at this
point. I admit it, I doubted!.
We
reformed and pulled again. I was seriously beginning to wonder
about the Sanity of our Chanters when I realized that one of them
was singing a little song in /say that made no sense whatsoever.
But we got 'em all setup again. 7,8,9,10. Then Kez made a big
huge ballsie call.
With the 5 Tank Mezzed in place, with the Chanters
going slowly loopy, he called a five minute halt to wait for a
/DEF recycle. So we waited with 6 Chanter mezzed Rathe Councilmen and 4 Tank mezzed, biting
nails, on the edge of our seats for a timer to count down to zero.
To
me this shows huge confidence of the leader for his team. He knew
we could do it and he relied on us to stay concentrated and keep
it together and get this thing done!. Just before the call to
pull the final RC member we also lost a Cleric on a Tank Mezz
group. Healers stepped up and we continued flawlessly.
Finally
we had a /def tank good to go and number 11 was inbound. Heal
rota kicked in and the Necros were finally allowed to use DOTs
again. I loaded up mister Number Ten and he went down fast.
"Kill
'em all" was the call and every one of the Rathe Council
members we had under control died rapidly. At this point the clock
is ticking. This is where we failed last week as we didn't manage
to kill the final RC member fast enough. Teeth were gritted, rings
clenched and we hunkered down to get it right this time.
The
Twelfth was quickly inbound and just as quickly dead. I got splatted
after Life Burning and being summoned for low HP aggro, but I
did my 10K or so of damage first.
I
got rezzed back in and I had just recovered my gear and memmed
my spell set when we got auto aggroed from the Avatar of Earth.
Man we were just not ready, we lost 5 Main Tanks in seconds, slowers
were being splatted on cast again, no one was ready for this.
I was at about 5% mana and medding as hard as I could. Finally
we got stabilized on a Twink(?) tank, the heal chain stayed on
him and I bet he got the thrill of his life most unexpectedly
tanking the Avatar of Earth!
I
managed to lay a Horror or two and a couple of Mujakis on him
but I never had the mana to really lay into him. Once we had the
Tank/Cheal stable tho he was always going to go down.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, may I present the object of 4 weeks work by Southern
Armada. The Corpse of the Avatar
of Earth. The Rathe Council has fallen before the might of
the Southern Armada!
And
this guy is the result of all that work. *Pop* an Essence of Earth
and Grats to everyone who got their Flags!. Three down one to
go!
And
Grats to Alone X!. The Avatar was kind enough to drop a Sword
of Primordial Power. With a Blade of Carnage and your new
sword you are going to be an absolute aggro monster! Good on you
mate you earned it!
Just
to make absolutely sure they were all dead we ran over to the
spawn point where I took this shot of an Empty Rathe Council throne!.
Because
it makes me feel good, here is another Dead Avatar. 4 weeks work
went into this screen shot, crawling ever closer to the goal each
time. Failing last week with only seconds to go was just heartbreaking.
But we more than made up for it Thursday night!.
This
is so very wrong. I still feel dirty, but scrubbing isn't making
it go away. Last week a Chanter (who shall remain nameless but
Ill get you Wolfe :) ) cast Illusion Halfling on the whole Group.
So this is Ulaa as a Halfling. I look much cuter as a DE, but
I'm damn cute as a halfling too!. I think next to DE's the halfling
female model is deffinitely one of the best looking in the game.
Now
it is tradition on Prexus that After a big kill you, or someone
else posts on the Prexus server message boards. This was duly
done after the RC kill by one of our members. I don't ever
post on the rant boards so I am going to have a little rant here.
A
couple of weeks ago one or two of our members stepped out of line
over
a spawn of Coirnav that the Fallen
Alliance had engaged. Now Prexus being a FCFS server if FA
wants to engage Coirnav with 6 toons entirely naked, then good
luck to them. They were there first, they honestly thought they
had the numbers to engage, it was their first try, off they went
and failed. Shit happens. I would have been happy for them if
they had been successful. Jealous but happy.
Unfortunately,
as described in the thread, /tells were exchanged, threats made
and it all turned into bullshit. I was embarrassed by it all to
be honest. It didn't need to happen and taking it up on the Prexus
Rant boards was just stupid.
However
in the later Grats on RC thread the Guild Leader of Fallen Alliance
(who I have grouped with twice and seemed to be a nice person)
brings up the old chestnut that Southern
Armada is "fed" our strats by Unity. Yes some of
our people raid with Unity, no they don't "feed" us
strats.
The
GL of FA is famous for (or at least he claims to) never reading
spoiler sites and coming up with all the Kill strats that his
Guild uses purely on his own. Good Luck to him and them, it seems
to be working for them. I will say one thing however, if you are
going to try and come up with a strat for RC by yourself, I would
suggest it will break your guild.
A
member of Talionis called Beluyen posted the following in the
Rant thread. (Page 2, 9 posts down)
Well, yes - having your members familiar with encounters, know
exactly what to do and when, what abilities any given mob has,
where to position your raid/the mob for every mob you encounter,
including time gods etc is an advantage given to you by Unity.
So yes, they helped you win. You yourself said 85% of the guild
was elemental flagged before you killed RZ for the first time,
are you suggesting Unity didn't help you win that one too? How
many SA members are Time flagged already?
Now
oddly enough Talionis had at least 20 members of their Guild Backflagged
by the Nameless Order before Talionis had killed Coirnav or RC.
Can you spell Hypocrite Beluyen?
I
would suggest in reply, as any person who has spent more than
five minutes Raiding will I think agree, that I can feed you every
strat in the game for every mob, yet having those strats still
wont guarantee you success. I have been a member of Guilds that
if we had had all the strats still couldn't get to where SA is
now. Beating the encounters with our numbers requires discipline,
skilled players and well led raids.
We
haven't been fed anything by anyone. A number of our membership
had previously been on Fenin Ro Raids with Unity. We still ended
up failing on him 5-6 times till we worked out the positioning
and we eventually worked out how to do it differently than Unity.
We don't go into encounter's with a strat all laid out before
us. Sometimes (like FA did against Coirnav) we will kick off an
encounter just to see what happens and then refine from there.
Yes
many of our members were Elemental flagged before we killed Rallos
Zek. I will however raise three points.
One:
we didn't enter the Elemental Planes as a Guild till WE killed
Rallos.
Two:
Watching someone else do it and doing it yourself is COMPLETELY
different. We failed a number of times on Rallos, also by the
time we were actually capable of killing Rallos we had to wait
a long time for a free spawn as a number of guilds were ahead
of us on the hunt to the Elementals.
What
this meant was that we spent a lot longer farming in POP than
most guilds do. This in turn meant that proportionally SA was
better equipped than the average first attempt on RZtW. Thus when
we finally got a serious shot at him he died fast. The first time
we actually killed him was a non standard Guild raid.
Three:
Three maybe four members of SA are Time flagged as far as I know.
I'm still waiting on my first Coirnav kill to complete my key.
Hell if you want to know the entire history of SA and every single
target we have killed for the last 56 weeks start
here at week one and read forward.
Yes
we went into the RC encounter with some idea of how it worked.
We still managed to pull the wrong mobs at the wrong times, we
still failed to get MOBs under control properly, we still had
to work out how to get and control aggro on the MOBs etc etc.
That took us 4 weeks of throwing ourselves at the RC until we
finally did it. We crawled a little bit further through the encounter
with each try.
Going
into an encounter like the RC blind is just insane. You will get
owned over and over and over. It is as much a test of patience
and perseverance as it is a test of strictly controlled and applied
power. So good luck to FA with RC. I really hope you can do it
within 4 months of the first time you engage.
Remember
one thing. We raid 2 nights a week, not the 5-7 nights a week
every other guild, who is at the same level as us raids. (including
Fallen Alliance) We are also at the wrong end of a long raid chain
that starts on the east coast of the USA about the time most of
us get up to go to work. When we get a shot at a MOB we have to
make it count, so Maddie, jealous much?.
I
would suggest that we have gotten where we are because we have
a fantastic Heal team, a superb Pull team, a great set of Officers,
excellent raid leaders and a generally older and more mature set
of players. I would be very interested to know how many other
2-day a week raid guilds are this close to Time.
Ah
well regardless of what idiots and assholes think or say. We know
that have gotten where we are on our own merits and the Fish
dies next!.
Thursday
rolls around. Posts are made on the Guild
message board. Coirnav is next. Be there. Initially we had
Coirnav tapped to pop in the Plane
of Water at around 11:45PM AEST. Now I am 2 hours ahead so
we were looking at hoping for an engage at 2:00AM NZ Time. I knew
this was going to hurt. I even considered having someone bot me,
but after some thought I said " Fuckit I am not missing our
on our first kill of anything." I was prepped to hang till
I had to go to work and just game straight through if I had to.
So
I was extremely happy to logon ( a bit late as I had to do a wee
bit of GF factioning ) and see the MOTD saying that Coirnav
had already popped and was waiting for us. I expected we would
head straight for him but Kez wanted to wait for more people to
logon so we headed to the Elemental Plane of Earth for a quick
Croc kill.
We
decide to do something a little different this time and instead
of beating Tantisala
Jaggedtooth with Spells and weapons. We did it the fast way
and just stuck a Tree
through her back.
Next
up was a wee jaunt into POEb.
This was a very fast clear. We had one wakeup call with Warlord
Ginlotaken wiping the raid. We had our first "Cleric
camp" call from Kez in a loooooong time. First I knew something
was wrong was just after the inc call, I look up and noticed that
about half the raid was dead. That's how fast it happened, Ginlotaken
is MEAN. We reformed, rezzed up and the next take down was smooth
as silk.
However
getting wiped by a mob like Ginlotaken is not a good indicator
when you are about to go up against one of the toughest encounters
in the game. By all accounts Coirnav isn't that hard to kill.
He has bugger all HP and sod all resistance's. The problem is
getting to him.
If RC is about sustained and specific application of power, then
Coirnav is about fast and wild killing yet in a very precise manner.
We have never had problems with the DPS section of the encounter,
our problem has always been with the control aspects of the encounter
prior to actually getting to Coirnav.
To
be perfectly honest I was sitting in Coirnav's lair and thinking
I would be happy just to actually see FishBoy this time. After
the POEb clear we had immediately headed down to Coirnav. I logged
out and turned absolutely every graphics option that I could,
off. My PC was a really nice one, 2 years ago. I really seriously
need to upgrade it, as a place like the Plane Of Water I have
to turn everything off just to be able to maneuver properly.
We
formed up and Kez and the officers obviously spent a lot of time
working out how we were going to do this. The tactics were very
slightly changed from last time and I think people had a better
idea of how the encounter was going to work this time. Encounters
like this one (also like RC) almost require you to go through
them multiple times so that each and every person knows their
place and what is going to happen.
I
was in the pull team again. Having turned off every graphics option
I was able to move around a lot more freely this time and felt
a lot more confident about my overall role. In fact I felt a whole
lot better in general about how I did in this raid. I felt like
I managed to contribute and actually make a difference
I
got my engage music sorted and good to go and the song of the
night was Nicklebacks cover of a Classic Elton John Track - "Saturday
Nights Alright for Fighting" (*Hug* in game MP3 player),
the raid was taught, questions asked and answered and heart absolutely
hammering we were good to go.
I
was FD'd in front of the cave as the trigger was pulled over my
head. I watched the HP drop on the trigger, trigger died, *Pop*
I went into Coirnav's lair. That's all the detail you are going
to get!.
The
babies were dieing relatively fast, tho the third wave seemed
to come in a little slow. At this point I was back with the raid
/assist nuking and AOEing with my pathetic little 155 Nuke. What
the hell it all helps!.
Named's
came inc and the modified strats worked perfectly! Named's were
under control and the babies were still dieing. POP Real named's.
Servalan you fucking rock. That was one of the best Pulls I have
ever seen, it was an absolute work of art. How you did it I will
never, ever know, but just wow.
Real
named's down. Into the cave!. This is further than we have ever
gotten before!. This time we actually get to engage Coirnav!.
The BURN call goes up as soon as we get to him. I positioned myself
just in front of him but the waves of movement from the main raid
just behind me kept moving me,so I ran off to the side a bit and
began to cast.
Now
I'm not sure if I got pushed into his range by waves of movement
or he summoned me. But I got 2 dots on and got splatted. I had
LB up, I had 6200 HP and was good to go for major nukeage and
I never got to use it.
I
zoned back into POK with Coirnav at 80%. Announcements were being
called in /GU
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Then
it went quiet. I'm sitting in front of my PC, nearly 2am, the
whole house is asleep, hunched over, fists clenched, stomach rolling
over and over, chanting GO GO GO GO GO under my breath. The last
few seconds stretched and stretched. I saw:
5
4
2
1
0
The last few seconds ticked over agonizingly, I couldn't do anything,
had I caused a fail dieing too soon?, would my 6k of LB damage
have made all the difference?, were we going to fail in death
walk the same way we did with Rydda'Dar
and have to do it all again?.
DEAD.
The
celebrations continued for about 20 minutes with fireworks going
off over head the whole time. The sense of relief was almost palapable.
We had done it. A journey that started over a year ago with our
first killings in the Plane of Innovation was finished. We are
now the fifth guild on Prexus to enter the Plane of Time. We are
one of only 170 or so guilds (estimated) game wide to have entered
Time. In a couple of months or less we will be one of less than
100 Guilds to have Dropped Quarm.
Grats
guys, we made it. We are at the very top of the game. Nobody believed
that we could do it. Even our fellow ANZAC guild's gave us shit.
But we persisted, we perservered and we DID IT!!!! We are in Time.
The
celebrations even continued into the Plane of Knowledge!.
I
logged off and headed for bed. There was no way in hell I was
going to get to sleep and sure enough I spent most of the night
before the alarm went off thinking about what we had just done.
Well
my day is done. Im going to go out now and have several large
beers to celebrate.
NOTE
I got home this evening and did the last bit of my Time key (Thank
you Gnosie, Xardan and Garaneb for completeing the box!) I then
spent a lot of the evening helping other people complete their
entry into Time! It was a great feeling to be able to say "Welcome
to Time" as each group zoned in for the first time!
