Well last week was a real mixture for me. I had both an extremely good week and a extremely bad one. Everquest, like life, delivers the good with the bad, sometimes in a single helping. Well first up, Monday after the long weekend, not looking forward to going to work with sand in my eyes, but hell I ain't going to miss a raid day either!. Last week was a week of much backflagging after we found out that the changes to flags for POP would not affect story line progression. BUGGER!
So first up was of course Crypt of Decay and Overlord Banford (I have no ears) Paffa. He of course got dinked in short order as we waited for everyone to logon and kick off the raid proper.
Once again Banford Paffa utterly refused to gift the Southern Armada Necromancer community (9 raiding Necro's on most nights) with an Earring. We have had one out of, ooo I dunno a bazillion kills!?. Come on, I mean look at the pic, the fat bastard clearly has 2 ears!!.
After Paffa snuffed it, Kez decided we would venture even deeper into the Ruins of Lxanvom and we kicked off the Caprin cycle with a decisive nailing of the ugly,one eyed, hits-like-a-mack-truck swine himself Carprin Deatharn.
Carprin was a little messy but he died all the same. The pull got a little crazy as the puller got stunned on the inc and went down, bringing adds in all of which got off tanked nicely. If I was a MoB that lived in COD and I heard a guild with 6 active Pallies was inc, Id be pissing off out the back door as fast as possible.
"Yup, I know they are inc Carprin old mate, just gotta log and umm, polish my bones a bit so they are all nice and shiny for the fight!, you stay right there and hold the fort!"
After that came the fight with the mob I have never seen. I wont say much apart from to post this pic. Anyone who has ever been through this fight knows exactly what this means.
Skelly Train
That's the first HALF of the train going back to the room.
We reformed at the GY and fought back in, to pull Raex Pwodill. Something was going weird with aggro that night and we had lots of thru the wall aggro resulting in another 2 wipes. We wiped the first time when we got both Raex and his buddy Vindor Mawnil at the same time.
We came back in and splatted Vindor on the second attempt, but 30 seconds before the pull was due Raex got aggro'd through a wall again. Second wipe. At this point it was close to 2.30AM and I really needed to sleep so I had to camp. SA went back into COD and forced High Priest Ultor Szanvon to bow down and finally got the flags!.
Thursday was a different kettle of fish entirely. The Kill list from Thursday would make most guilds of our size just wet themselves with envy. First up is the typical warm up kill, Overlord Banford (The Aurally Challenged) Paffa.
Next up was a run up to Drunder the Fortress of Zek, to see Vallon Zek, I mistook him for his brother Tallon (who always kills me) when the Target was called and mentioned not to bother rezzing me until after the fight as he would only kill me again straight away. My mistake was pointed out to me in /gu and much hilarity at my expense ensued. Ah well, we ganked him. As smooth a take down as I have seen yet.
Vallon Zek quaking in his boots.
Vallon Zek multi boxing in an attempt to cheat
It didn't do him any good and he went down before the flashing blades of Southern Armada.
Next up, Plane of Valor and Aerin`dar. Now for some reason we always have a problem getting to AD. He's kind of like Grummus, no matter what we do, there is always a train, there is always deaths and Rezzing and its never anyone's fault. Its really simple, use the fucking wall, don't run across the middle of the zone and when fifteen level 60 mobs turn up at the switch on your trail point blankly at yourself and say "It wasn't me". Just use the wall, that is all, thank you.
So for more Flaggage, we dropped AD like he was a pair of week old underwear.
Looted, dropped down the zone well, ran down the tunnel, zoned into Halls of Honor and headed over to see Aerin`dar's big brother Rydda`Dar. Now RD is a MOB you have to always be on the top of your game for. If you aren't he will ream out good and proper in no time. I have been told that even Elemental guilds can have trouble with him and I believe it. He is a big ass nasty Dragon with a damage output to match anything we are likely to meet on the way to the Elementals.
But when you know you can run up and sit in his mouth, or when even a Pink Power Ranger can kill him..
then you kind of lose the fear of him!. 3 in a row woot!!.
I hate that Dragon and ganking him gives me a great sense of satisfaction.
Quote of the week comes from Garaneb immediately after we dropped RD:
"Can anyone tell me how long I have been melee'ing with these cups?"
After RD we were feeling a little lost, nothing worthy of us was up. Bert, MM, Saryn, Agnarr, all dead damnit. So we decided to do a bit more flagging and headed off to see Grummus!. So off to Plane of Disease. First up of course the run across POD, see comments for run to AD and apply here. Use the fucking wall, its really easy.
Gryme the Crypt Guardian dies fast...
Aramin the Spider Guardian follows suit...
Grummus is by now terrified and is trying to hide...
Hiding didn't seem to do him much good and he fell over shortly after this pic was taken, strangely he didn't seem able to get up.
What now I hear you ask?, what else is there on the nights feast of MOBs? Tormax of course!. Everyone zoned through to to CODb from Grummus and raced for Kael Drakkal in case someone else should notice him and kill him. Well they didn't, we formed up and within about 10 minutes King Tormax was inc, and in 13 minutes he was dead!.
I like killing Giants even more than I like killing RD, so this night was just getting better and better!. In addition to Tormax we also pulled and killed Derakor the Vindicator. I didn't manage to get a screen shot of him as he came with about 5 friends and it was all a bit confusing for a bit, then he was dead before I managed to hit the button lol.
I'm hoping one day to max out Yelinak faction so I can go for White Dragonscale Boots. They are easily the best caster boots in EQ short of the Elementals. Apparently you can raise Yelinak faction by killing Vindi and KT only. Well I've killed Vindi a lot and KT twice, so I must run to Lord Yelinak one day and check my faction against him. I would guess that one more KT kill would put me at Ally.
What a night!
Paffa
Vallon Zek
Ryda'Dar
Aerin'Dar
Tormax
Grummus
It was over at that point for Thursday night, but Friday night we had a very welcome surprise. Seru was up!. This is where my week started to unravel. We fought into Sanctus Seru with no problems.
Seru himself...
I was put into the MT group. Me, 2 clerics, Bard, 2 Main Tanks. This is where I fucked up. I took from earlier conversations that I would need to heal the clerics as they would be inside the AE, so I loaded up ZToV, a disease based group heal. I also knew I would be Mind Wracking a mezzable caster mob pulled into camp to keep the Clerics topped up.
Mezzable...
I looked at this situation and figured I would also throw out DOT's at Lord Inquisitor Seru. So I knew I would be switching between targets and that I must NOT dot the Mezzed MOB or we would have a level 50ish unmezzable MOB in camp in the middle of a long ass fight that needs good control to complete.
You just know whats going to happen...
First up Seru got pulled, I waited for the MT to call aggro and cast ZToV. I promptly got roundly cursed out by the MT for taking his one and only Free Buff slot. Thought to myself, oh Fuck, drop out ZToV. At this point I now have MindWrack on the mezzed and DOT's on Seru. You just know what's coming next don't you?!. Yup I dotted the Mezz MOB. Idiot idiot idiot.
I was very very lucky in that I only cast a 54 second DOT, The Pallies stepped up and offtanked till the dot wore off at which point the Chanters promptly got the mob mezzed again. During that time, the Mezz mob beat the shit out of me, I managed to get an FD off at about 20% health, I think I distracted the Clerics enough that they dropped the rythym of the CH chain and the Main Tanks got down to 50% each and we quickly lost one. In other words, one slip of attention and I damn nearly wiped a full raid. If I had, I think I would have had a great deal of difficulty logging in again for a while.
Just goes to show, one mistake, one distraction and you can fuckup the night of 50 other people. I spent the rest of the night berating myself and calling myself bad names. Once the Mezz mob was back under control I also de-memmed all the potentially damaging spells in my line up, targeted the mezz MOB and did nothing but MindWrack the rest of the fight. Rule Number one, and one I should damn well know by now, pay attention, don't ever get sloppy.
Seru died and that was that. Sunday got a lot better, I joined an SA group in BOT, we were happily killing away when Gara noted that nameds were up. So after a bit of running about the place, we dropped 3 out of 4 named's. I won the roll for the only Rune that dropped. After the group broke up I ran to the Necro spell guy, did a long silent and fervent prayer to the Loot Gods, reminded them that we had sacrificed a Pally to them earlier in the evening and handed in the Rune.
Woot!
Blood of Thule. That's the last I needed, bar the "Nice to have but not really bothered" spells like GDMF I have a pretty much full spell book!.
Got a wee problem with The Litte Red Fire Engine. He isnt Red anymore.
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