17/04/03 Week Eight
Well after last weeks efforts, we reviewed our procedures, prayed to the Gods of EQ, and after much soul searching decided that it was the Pally Sacrificing that wasn't working for us. So we have switched. The official SA raid Sacrifice is now... Shaman!. Kezlar manfully stepped up to the plate and volunteered to be the guild sacrifice and what a marvelous job he did!
The beginning of the week was a little slow. We all logged in on Monday and the scouts went out, what was up?. Nothing, Nada, zip, zilch. Everything worth killing was dead. So we did the SA default raids and headed for the BOT Tower bosses.
First to fall was our old friend Auliffe Chaoswind, he dropped some DAMN nice gear.
To be honest I always thought the Tower Bosses dropped only Melee stuff. I didn't realize they could potentially drop caster gear as well. WOOT I will certainly be a lot more enthusiastic about nailing them from now on! After Auliffe we headed across to Brynju Thunderclap. Thanks to the "new!" "Improved!" pathing the pull was a bit odd, but he died anyway.
And low and behold, MORE caster gear!, the melee's were cursing by now *grin* so off we went to Eindride Icestorm.
I hate Einride, getting to him is such a pain in the ass!, There are so damn many giants in the way. But he died anyway and we figured what the hell, and set off for the earth tower. Now I've never done Earth tower, I've killed lots of Earth Giants in the 4way room, but never been in the tower. So we head in and start killing giants and associated beasties.
Now I still maintain that the easiest way to take a Giant out of the fight would be just to jump up and rip out that nipple ring. For some reason Pooby refuses to try this, he always mutters something about "tweaking nipples is just so ghey dude" and proceeds to beat the crap out of the giants in the traditional manner.
We also had a couple of baby nameds pop up in the run up to Kuanbyr Hailstorm.
Hailstorm is a fun fight as he pops almost immediately after a place holder so you really have to be ready for him.
Well that was that for Monday. A clean sweep through the BOT towers!. I managed to pick up a Sandstorm Gem during the raid, so I think I am now only one gem short of a tower key. Still need two spheres for Agnar key though. Nothing else was up so we said grats to the Loot Winners and we all went to bed.
Tuesday we learned that the server had come down during the morning our time, so we all logged on for a little impromptu raidage. I was XPing in BOT when the call went out. "AOW is UP, get yer asses to KD!" Wooot!, I've never killed the AOW!, I've seen him taken down but never been part of an attempt! Apparently he is pretty much perma dead on Prexus so SA had never had an attempt at him either!
So we headed off, formed up and in quick succession Pulled and Killed all the guards and nameds. Then came:
And Finally, The Avatar of War!
Its a long fight, one mistake and your raid is toast. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Avatar of War's Corpse!.
Mewkus was MA for the bulk of the fight but with 20% to go he went down. I was in the Cleric channel, poised and waiting for someone to call for mana. So I was watching when with a 3 second CH chain going, as soon as Mewkus went down the Clerics switched to The Little Red Fire Engine without missing a beat!. Awesome job from everyone involved. What a team is SA!
Now normally here is where I would have a link to a dead Little Red Fire Engine image. However I have a sneaking suspicion he has started to bribe the Clerics, as he didn't die. Hmmmmm, wonder how much its going to cost me to get them to start letting him die again. Damnit the Clerics in SA are going to be making out like Bandits!
So instead of a dead LRFE, I give you a LRFE with a Blade Of Carnage!! Fantastic Job mate!
Grats to all the winners of the PhatLewtz! The loot from Kael Drakkal certainly made up for all the caster loot the night before!
As we now had a full sized raid force and we were all buzzed from the kill we headed off to Ssraeshza Temple for another MOB thats pretty much perma dead on Prexus, Xerkizh the Creator. There was a bit of confusion during the run in and we had a delay as we were waiting for people to be dragged and rezzed. (sorry for the confusion Mewk). We cleared through to XTC's room killing a LOT of snakes in the process.
Eventually it was all good and we moved forward to engage XTC.
Now a lot of Melee hate the Ssra fights as they pretty much position themselves, hit attack and go AFK. I can see that would be boring as hell. Unfortunately casters cant do that, we actually have to pay attention to the fight, refresh spells, watch for resists, manage aggro etc etc. So this is what I looked at for the 8 minutes or so of the Xerkizh the Creator fight.
If you want to know what its like to stare up a snakes ass, watch that picture for 8 minutes and you will know exactly what its like. Anyway, he died and he dropped some damn nice PhatLewtz!. Unfortunately Southern Armada currently owns no Mages. That sword you can see in the above pic is this. Grats the destroy button. What a waste.
Well we decided we still had a bit of fight left in us. It was getting damn late for me as it was about 1:30AM Tuesday morning at this point, but I made a coffee, threw some Incubus up in the MP3 player and we headed up to the High Priest of Ssraeshza. I think at this point everyone was just getting tired as it started to get a little messy. We cleared to him, had the room adds under control and isolated and it all started to go wrong.
Unfortunately at this point my Girlfriend got home, it was 2:30AM and I got "the look" (which any EQ player with a partner knows well) so I was forced to log , go and be very contrite and try and get some sleep at the same time. I felt like absolute crap the next day and wandered through my work day in a bit of a daze, but it was damn worth it.
Now I have been seriously considering the outfitting of Ulaa in the last couple of weeks. This is what Ulaa currently looks like:
What I would like to do, and of course this is going to very much depend on drops, luck, raids held and my available merit at the time of drops, is this:
Primary: Bone Bladed Dagger
Secondary: Pus Covered Beetle Carapace
Range: Mind Puncture
The major reason for that is a BBDagger is probably the best prime/offhand weapon I am likely to see for a long time.(I cant believe I wrote that, holy crap 5 months ago I wouldn't have even dreamed of a primary Item better than my heart!!)The Carapace (apart from looking cool) has decent stats and has Affliction Efficiency IV.
For a Necromancer the four foci you really want are Affliction Efficiency IV, Affliction Haste IV , Extended Range IV and Extended Affliction IV. These four foci would mean my DOT's are cheaper to cast, cast faster, cast from a longer range and last a lot longer.
MindPuncture is simply the best caster Range Item I've ever seen or heard of. That basically sorts out my Prime/Off/Range for the foreseeable future and gives me one of the 4 focus Items I really need to be operating at Max efficiency.
I have currently borrowed a Ceramic Gavel Of Justice for my range slot, this item also has AEIV. But its not mine and I would need to replace it eventually. AEIV has made a massive difference in the amount of available mana I have during raiding. As the bulk of what I cast will always be DOT's, the reduction of the mana cost on all dots by 25% is a HUGE saving. Thus I always have that much more mana to throw out mana dumps or spells like MindWrack, Nukes etc.
I have all the bits to finish the quest, unfortunately Gnomes don't like me a lot, so its off to do more faction farming. Damnit I hoped I was through with all that after the 3 weeks spent killing Goblins every damn day in Droga for Chardok faction. However the Cloak is worth it.Mobs 0
Little Red Fire Engine 2
LRFE survived untouched.
If it wasnt for all the PhatLewtz this week i would suspect that there was a fundamental imbalance in the laws of the Universe.
Well Fridays raid sucked. We formed up in POD for my first run at Grummus. I was sooooo excited as I have never killed the fat bastard before and unfortunately today wasn't going to be the day either. Apparently the fat bastard's spawn was changed so we had to figure out the best way to pull him and try and kill him at the same time. They only changed 2 things it seems, how far you can pull him out of his room and the speed of the repops of his guards. Piss me right off, I want that damn flag. I am so sick of sitting outside COD waiting while the guild kills stuff in there.
Unfortunately those two little things caught us by surprise both times. So we formed up and headed to the castle in POD. Ran in (with the aid of a massive train) and setup to kill Gryme.
Now Gryme went down faster than the Little Red Fire Engine normally does. So we moved further in and nailed Aramin. (My GF was behind me yelling "kill the spider kill the spider!")
We moved up to Grummus's room and after pulling and killing all his guards...
we were ready for Grummus. We pulled him and he yo-yoed back to his room, first surprise there. So we figured we would have to rush into his room to be ready for him, In went the Zerg rush, aggroed a healer, lost control of aggro, wipe. Bugger, reform, race back into the castle, kill down to Grummus room, race in, fight is going well,,,,
and the damn room starts to repop. He was down at about 50% when I got nailed from behind by a Guardian Knight of Pestilence . No-one was expecting the repops to come so fast. Thing they changed number two. After that we were all pretty buggered so the raid pretty much broke up.
For a little light relief and just to make us all feel better about ourselves we headed off and put the hurt on our old friend Chaoswind.
This weekend was a long weekend (Easter) and unfortunately for many and various reasons I didn't get on much, when I did the damn server crashed. SA set up a pickup raid on Monday night and went off and nailed the Cursed. there was much PhatLewtz! (which I cant link cause they havent updated the main page arrgh!) to be had, but unfortunately since no-one rang me up and told me that the raid was on I wasnt there so Im not going to write about it. *pouts
No comments:
Post a Comment