Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifty Three

1/03/04 Week Fifty Three

It has been pointed out to me that this update is a little late. In fact this is very true, in my defense I do have to say that these take quite a lot of work and effort to write. I have to edit the pics to make them viewable, create the page, setup the file structure, write the page, re read it, spell check it, read and edit it again, do all the linking, spell check again, update the front page link to the new weekly page and then upload everything.


There is at least 8 hours work goes into each of these little missives and I have to try and do it all between actually doing work. If work is busy (which it is at the moment with big projects on) then updates unfortunately come a little slower.


First up Monday was a wee jaunt into the Elemental Plane of Earth. We decided to drop the Mud ring, because, well its easy, and we were still waiting on people to log on. The big target for tonight was to be Coirnav but we needed a solid raid to even contemplate hitting him. So until people had logged on we did a wee warm up. Lots and lots of dead earthy type things later, we squashed the Monsterous Mudwalker.

We didn't do any more in Earth (thank God) and headed over to the Elemental Plane of Fire which had some very nice juicy targets up. The first to die was an old friend we hadn't seen for quite some time. Blazzax the Omnifiend came charging in and was promptly stopped by a wall of Pooby. He almost looked puzzled as Pooby, SA and Poobies Blade of War carved him a new hole from which to breathe.

Next up was Babnoxis the Spider Bitch. I really, really hate her. She drains my mana. She died. 'Nuff said.

We left fire totally clear. I was hoping for a surprise birdie pop such as we had last week but alas it was not to be. So we all trundled merrily off to everyone's favorite zone, the Elemental plane of Water. This time however instead of having just one mob up we had damn near a full pop, something we have very rarely seen in Water. We began rapidly clearing our way down through the zone trash to the lower levels.

The first Fishy we met was Hydrotha. Being a straight melee mob he was easily ganked. Straight melee are my favorite mob's, no dodging AE's, no crappy mana drains. Just set up a CH rot, pull the Mob and kill.

Next came Krizik the Mighty. Now the trick with Water is all in the positioning. It must be an absolute nightmare for the tanks to get into position and stay there. They are moving in 6 axes, up, down, forward, back, left right and being in water, any movement near you can then cause you to move around even more.

This is a problem for casters as well, as soon as you're moved due to someone swimming past, you immediately get an "interrupted" message. Krizik is a really hard mob to position and usually any fight with him is messy as he runs all over the place.

Then came Ofossaa. We had one shot at him a couple of months ago when we first headed into the Plane of Water and he happily knocked us back. We were determined to return the complement and this time he died smoothly and cleanly.

Finally we came up against Griohin the Wise. Now we have nailed this guy on several occasions so it was no real surprise to anyone that he died, well maybe he was a little surprised. If Water was up a bit more often we would happily move into it and farm.

Finally we had enough peoples to attempt the Big Fish Himself. we headed down to his lair. This was our 4th run against him and we changed our tactics a little to try and overcome issues we had seen the week before. We did a lot better this time but once again failed on True Named control. For some reason we seem to do everything else well, we have the timing down, but the true named's just run riot.

I felt a lot better about what I was doing as I had a lot better understanding of what was going on and what it was I was wanted to do. Still too many people dicking about tho, still to many people asking afterward "so wasn't I supposed to do that?. Pay attention for fucks sake and we can get past this guy, concentrate for one hour is all it takes. Coirnav is the road block to Time. We can do the Rathe Council easy, for Coirnav we really have to get our shit together. Ah well next time.

Coirnav 4
Southern Armada 0

We held a little raid in the middle of the week as a bit of a back flagging exercise. I took Garakk along hoping for a bit of flaggage but it wasn't quite to be. As a warm up we dropped Paffa and then moved on to the Named's in the Plane of Storms to finish off a few keys. I had no parts for the BOT key when we started I now only need beard, bone and medallion to finish. I'm hoping over the next couple of weeks we get to do a few more runs into the Plane of storms.

It was actually a hell of a lot of fun doing basic raiding as Garakk and I hope to do more of it.

Thursday kicked off with the raid starting in the Elemental Plane of Fire. Once again, due I think, to everyone ahead of us now being deep into Time, we were seeing MOBs up that we rarely had in the past. So Arch Mage Yozanni was the first beastie inbound. His AE mana drain DOT is not only nasty but it has a massive range. So we casters were forced high up on the wall's and a rota call was set up so we could avoid it.

Dawneyes was kind enough to make a surprise appearance shortly after Yozzanni died. Sanfy equipped his Mugs(tm) and the big chicken also laid his life down for the betterment of Southern Armada.

Finally for Fire we had Quavonis Firetail. He was a bit painful on the pull and the pull team had a bit of a problem with him. But eventually he was brought to the raid and he died.

I have to say what's up with Bracers dropping?, or not dropping I should say. I've been hanging out waiting on a silk bracer drop for the last 6 weeks or more. We have killed numerous MOBs over the period that are capable of dropping them yet we have seen absolutely none at all. I think the loot lever is stuck somewhere, maybe we need to be saccing more Shammies?, Kez come here for a sec...

Fire was clear so it was over to the Plane of EarthB to clear a few more named's. Now I would provide piccies but basically all the mobs look exactly the same as any thing you are likely to see in BOT. So here is a Generic_Giant_01 to represent the 2 hours we spent killing named's and trash in EarthB. I really seriously hate EarthB. Although its a fast clear and the loot is damn good I cant land nada on the named's.

Nuking the trash is fine, but when a named comes in I can blow an entire mana bar and not do more than 1k damage. FP, SK, BOT, DP, Neuro, CoC, Horror, Pyrocruor all resisted 100% I can land ToM lifetaps but they are so heavily mitigated its not worth casting. ToM is normally a 850 tap and I am landing it consistently for less than 100. This isn't just one time. This is every time we enter POEb. So on named's I just don't do anything now except maybe pump someone who may need it. /cry

I gotta ask where the hell is everyone?. We are two targets short of the Plane of Time. After we get into Time its all Candy, its like Vex Thal for the big boys. A month in Time and we will happily be farming Quarm and everybody will take a massive leap in power. So where has everyone gone?. For many of the pre elemental targets we had full raids plus extra groups. Now even an hour or two or three after raid time starts we are struggling to make 50 people.

A couple of people are away for one reason or another and have announced it on the message boards, that's cool, so where's the rest?

I know people have lives etc etc but this has been going on for weeks now. Where has everyone gone?. We simply cannot take out targets like Coirnav/Rathe Council without a full Guild pop, we need numbers for the sheer DPS. Are people no longer interested?, does no-one want to make it into Time as much as me?. If we do make it into Time will all these people suddenly turn up and whine about not having keys? Cause its a key not a flag, 85/15 doesn't work. Much like POEb if you don't have a key, you don't get in, ask Vuurya exactly how frustrating that is.