Monday, May 24, 2004

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty Five

24/05/04 Week Sixty Five
We are getting good at this. We blew through the first three tiers of Time and headed straight to Tier 4. We had one wee bit of excitement with the pull below. The pic below actually shows 4 level 68 Mobs being dealt with. I'm not sure why, but we ended up with 4-5 Mobs inbound at the same time. I backed right up and pretty much thought we were good for a wipe, but we handled it and moved on.
I have to say I actually quite like Tier 3. I put my feet up on my desk, put up ArchLich, set up my hotkeys and quick keys and pretty much have a doze.

The hour or so of the Tier 3 portion of the raid goes like this. (Everything is a Hot key) 2-(Assist MT-usually Pooby), ALT-5 (Neurotoxin), 2, ALT-5, rinse and repeat. If we get a big target inbound it changes somewhat and becomes 2, ALT-1(Horror),ALT-8(FD), ALT-2(Blood of Thule), ALT-3( NightFire), ALT-8(FD), ALT-1(Horror) ALT 4(Funeral Pyre), ALT-8(FD), 1(Sit)

Usually the MOB is dead at that point and I go back to throwing out the odd Neurotoxin and Tap and dozing on my chair.

Its not really till we hit Tier 4 that I wake up again!.
Its amazing how even though we come back week after week the Mobs have learned to welcome us with open arms.
Hooray Southern Armada is back to play!
So we clear through Tier 3 with MASSIVE amounts of Phat Lewtz dropping. This really is like the VT for big guilds. The Lewtz that drop as you clear through are just staggering. For every clear, as a Guild we gain massively in overall HP, DPS and skill. I think this was almost the problem that SOE had when they released GOD. By forcing Guilds to go through the hoops we had to jump through to get to Time, by forcing them to learn the cooperative skills that we have, and then forcing them into Time for several months they had created killing Juggernauts.
To even cause a Guild who had been farming Time for months to slow down, the targets they created had to be absolutely terrifying in their damage output and abilities.

Anyway. We formed up in Tier 4 and crushed Saryrn and Terris Thule. We weren't really interested in them or the rest of Tier 4, we wanted Rallos, he was the bastard we had come for. He had stopped us too many times already. Last weeks efforts were halted by silly little things, it wasn't going to happen again. So we crushed Saryrn and Terris and moved up to Tier 5.
We set up for Rallos. I discovered at this point that I can easily sustain 500 DR, 500PR and 500MR but I'm a little short of FR. So with only 452FR (Damn I need some Resist Fire potions) I headed into his room. Kez had called the strat, he was pulled into position and we went for him. Everyone had their game faces on and we just ganked him. It wasn't flawless, it wasn't a perfect kill, but there was never even any doubt that he was going to die. It was as smooth as silk and Rallos Zek the Warlord ended up flat on his back looking up at Tier 6.
At this point we were running into 3:00AM and I really needed to sleep. I was crashing out badly so I said my farewells and gated. SA went for the last unkilled god on our list, Innothule. I have never killed my god, not even in the original Plane of Hate. So I am really looking forward to engaging him at some point.

Friday rolled around and we logged on to discover that Unity had had a late raid into Time. Unfortunately this meant that our instance was delayed and we were locked out due to theirs still being "live". So we all headed over to Ferubi to do the Smith Rondo event again. I thought this one was going to be interesting as there was a reasonable chance we could fail. Many Guilds at the same level as us had wiped on this guy before, maybe our first run at him was just a fluke?!.
Packmaster Skoiat Pizak trying to stop us
So we did the hand in and began the cycle. The Weapon Master Vtiink Vzaan spawned and we crushed her (him, it?)
Once again, with a pause to handle the 4 assistants, we spawned Smith Rondo and smoothly took him down. There really wasn't any issue. That's the rule proved again, kill twice to prove the first wasn't a fluke.
Once Rondo was down we headed back to Time and formed up to kick off our instance. Unfortunately either our guesses start time or Unities stated finish time was wrong. I'm not sure why but we were locked out. We tried for a good 40 minutes past our supposed start time and still couldn't get in. So after a bit of deliberation and the trackers going out to find out what was up, we headed over to Water.

I have to admit I very nearly gated on the spot. I had such a strong reaction of "Oh FUCK no" when they announced that we were going to clear 4 targets in Water. I hung outside for quite some time, I was actually going to log before even zoning in, then Kez asked me to help pick up some stragglers. So I steeled myself zoned in and helped out. We headed down until we reached Grioihin the Wise.

We are a pretty damn fine killing machine at this point. Everyone knows their jobs and we are equipped to do it well and this guy still gives us issues. It's not us, it's the sodding zone environment. If this was a flat zone and not Water, we wouldn't have any problems killing anything at all in this zone.
Anyway I waited on the one kill and at that point I logged. It ended up being a pretty early night for me as I logged around 1:15am. But honestly I just couldn't face Water again. I would rather Pound Nails into walls with my forehead. Actually its about the same feeling.

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