Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty One

21/04/04 Week SixtyOne
Well Mondays Raid just utterly Rocked. We went, we saw, we kicked ass all the way to Tier4. Now we get to kill Gods!
First up this week was a little trip to kill Zordak Ragefire to finish off a Cleric epic. I don't think I've ever killed him before so adding one more Dragon to my list was a lot of fun!. I would much rather go off and kill a Dragon or other such quest mob than sit around on my ass LFG that's for sure.

Of course I made the classic NooB mistake of sitting off at a distance to cast on him and of course everything bounced. Note to self, you have to be literally under a Kunark Dragon in order to successfully land anything at all.

Monday of course was the reason I have been sucking up to the Girlfriend all week. The first of three raids kicked off with us clearing Tier one. The first Trials went damn near perfectly with us clearing all 5 in a really good time.

Initially we believed that we would be inside the instance reset time on Tier 2, we believed that right up until we opened the clock face and saw a fully re popped Tier 2. The 5 teams entered Tier 2 and began their clearing. The team I was in initially joined the Earth tier but we gated out and went back into the Undead and began clearing that.

Opening this is the goal

Earth had a few problems with Link Deaths on the pulls and thus they wiped twice. Finally we had the whole raid in place in Earth and we did a suicide clarence. We were absolutely down to the wire when the Earth named was finally pulled and killed. Everyone kept their heads tho and the raid stayed calm with pulls coming in and Mobs dieing in an organized fashion.

So with Tier 2 down we headed into Tier 3. Now this was where we stuffed up last time. We were under severe Time pressure now (For those who don't know each Tier in Time has its own time limit, fail it and you get bounced from the zone) and we needed to pull fast and consistently.

I don't know how Monks/SK's do it. They are primary pullers and they must die 10 times each on a given raid. I would be frustrated beyond belief but they just get up and go again for the next wave. /bow to you guys, your patience is phenomenal. The pulling was clean and fast with only one or two little glitches here and there.

After last time we had a strat figured out as to what to pull and how to deal with Multi's. Even with the speed we were clearing the zone it was still damn close and we threw everything including the kitchen sink at the last two named MOB's. POW they died and we started to get the zone emotes for the entrance into Tier 4!.

I know I bitched last week but damn this is our 4th, maybe 5th raid into Time and we have made it into TIER FOUR!!!. Holy Shit!. That's damn respectable in anybodies book!

So for the first time we zoned into Tier 4 and took a look around. Its basically a big room with 4 Gods standing around, Saryrn, Terris Thule, Vallon Zek, Tallon Zek.

Terris Thule waiting to die

Saryrn also waiting her turn

We decided to take on Saryrn first and formed up at the tables. Discussion of possible tactics took place, starts were called and we were in!. Poor Sanfy, assigned the difficult task *Not* of positioning her, he equipped his two lucky mugs and charged!. As soon as he approached Saryrn his DI fizzled and he immediately went splat!

That put a wee dent in our plan but we recovered and Saryrn was soon in the right spot. Now here is my problem. Being a Necro i have spent a lot of time putting AA's into useless stuff like Crit Dots, Lightning Reflexes, HP's etc etc when i should have been putting them into Resists!. Saryrn has a REALLY nasty AE manadrain with a rapid recast. Now even with all my resist gear on I can only manage an unbuffed DR of around 230.

With buffs I'm around 400, which means I got hit with every single round of AE and was damn soon OOM. The initial Saryrn pull didn't go well anyway and at about 80% we mem-blurred her and sent her back to her spawn.

Mmm we had a little think, I'm sure the officers channel was just a blur at this point and we reset and headed back in. This time went a lot faster (I went OOM at the same damn rate but oh well) and a lot cleaner. We had her down at 30% with the two waves of adds dealt with when Kez pulled the plug due to the Clerics being OOM.

That was it for the night for me and Southern Armada all logged shortly after. Second raid of the week is tonight and Saryrn and Terris Thule will both die. The Zek brothers are supposed to be some of the toughest Mobs in the Tiers short of Quarm so we will have to see how we go with them. I know they have stopped a few guilds cold.

Wednesday. 

SOE decides to patch, they don't announce it anywhere, they don't tell anyone, they just emote a few hours before the fact that they are taking the servers down. Fuckers.

Thursday.

I went off and spent some money, bought some crap gear and added up some tribute points. So with level 5 DR running I headed off to the Plane of Time and formed up for Earth. The Earth trial is the only one I haven't done so far and was quite fun!. Its pretty basic. Kill MoB's. Kill adds as they spawn, kill boss. Simple really. It was quite cool actually because after we were done, we got to sit on our asses and wait for everyone else to finish the other 4 trials!!. Usually the group I am in ends up doing at least two sometimes threeTrials.

Earth Trial Boss

  

Now for some reason I kept missing stuff tonight, like MA calls, raid instructions etc etc. Normally I am really attentive about that kind of thing but I kept finding myself about to engage and still not having a clue about who was where and doing what. I can only conclude I was having mini naps with my eyes open. I was bloody tired all the way through this raid. Its been a damn long week here at work and I really needed some sleep.

Anyway we made it though the Trials pretty fast this time. We had one booboo with the Water Trial where the tank went down. It all worked out well though as our Rangers are so damn Uber they tanked the Water boss instead!

So with all 5 Trials down we headed up into Tier 4. Saryrn was waiting for us. This time we knew what we were doing and formed up fast. Strats were called and in we went. She died perfectly this time and we finally began to see the dreams of CandyLand begin to come true. Time is like Vex Thal for big toons. The Lewtz are Phat, and when we get to the point that we can clear Time in a single session, then the Lewtz will truly flow.

Poor Saryrn. Dead at the hands of the Southern Armada again

So our next target was going to be Terris Thule. This fight is very similar to the Saryrn fight, with nasty AOE's and nasty adds. So we rebuffed and went in. I'm not sure what happened on the first pull but we lost Tanks pretty rapidly. I think its having the Tanks standing in Water and being pushed in/out by TT during the fight. This requires the Clerics to be in/out of the water as well which must be a constant pain in the ass while you are trying to keep a CH chain running.

Anyway we aborted the fight and headed back to the Table to reform. We reassessed our strat, rebuffed and went in again. This time the fight went a lot smoother and Terris Thule fell quietly before us. The clean up after the fight was a bit messy but a hell of a lot of fun. We had chanters OOM running around trying to avoid the MOBs that were chasing them as the Necros tried to pump them with enough mana to get off just one more mezz. Meanwhile the off tanks were hurriedly beating down the unmezzable adds. All of this was going on after Terris Thule was dead and Lewtz were being called. Was a hell of a fun fight!.

Next up. The Zek brothers. Now these two have a reputation as being the toughest of all the Time Gods. Particularly little brother Tallon.

Vallon Zek waiting on us.

Tallon Zek waiting to kick our ass.

So once again we reformed and got set up for a new encounter ( I love going into a new fight!, you never know what is going to happen!) This Tallon is a big brother to the little boy in the Plane of Tactics. He hits harder, faster and his AOE's are worse. So I really wasn't anticipating a first time win. We aborted at about 95% because we got brother Vallon as an add.

I don't know how we managed to add him. It may even have been me, I know I went around the corner a bit to wide as I didn't realize that there was no wall between Vallon and Tallon. So we aborted fast and reset the brothers.

We reformed and went in a second time, and again we got Vallon as an add. This time I know it wasn't me as I stayed damn tight going around that corner. I'm not sure what it was that was causing the aggro. Talon's AOE is big enough to hit Vallon?, some one not realizing Vallon is there?, someone going LD and training him?. No idea.

So for the 2nd time we wiped with Tallon barely scratched. At his point it was around 1:30am and I was fading in and out I must admit. I really, really wanted to hang out for just one more attempt but I simply couldnt do it. I knew Friday morning was going to be painful anyway, but logging an extra half an hour earlier can make the difference between the work day being painful or sheer torture.

For some reason last night I went through butt loads of pets. I must have lost at least 15 pets for various reasons. 170pp down the tubes. Ah well, them's the breaks.

I know everyone has items they drool over and there are a couple of things in Time I am keeping an eye out for, but for me its the thrill of being there. I don't think "another item" would keep me up till 2:00am most raid nights, dropping another MOB will. Missing out on loot doesn't bother me, but missing out on the first time that SA broke into Tier 2 and 3 the other day really pissed me off.

The third raid this week is tonight (Friday) and me and my bottle of Bourbon (Yay I can drink!) will be there with bells on.

Well Friday rolled around and due to circumstances beyond my control I was about 20 minutes late for the raid. I didn't miss anything tho and we were still forming up for the Tier One Trials. We started pretty much as soon as I logged on and I was assigned to the Air trial group. I headed over to the zone in still sorting out my channels etc. I completely fucked up and zoned into the Fire trial instead.

I simply wasn't paying attention to where I was, I thought I was in the right spot as I could see a couple of my group members on the same place. Turns out they were in the wrong place as well :/. I corrected my mistake immediately and gated out, but damn I felt like a twit.

So anyway, we pissed through the tier one trials. They aren't exactly trivial yet, but like most things, once SA has mastered something we very, very rarely ever fail at it a second time. In fact once we have beaten an encounter for the first time I cant think of a single time we have ever failed at it the second time around.

We had already cleared through Terris Thule and Saryrn on Wednesday, so Friday we formed up straight away for Tallon Zek. Much like Wednesday we didn't spend a lot of time on the first strat call. We were already buffed from the trials, so Kez called a strat modification and we went in.

Now the Zek brothers have (as I have said in the past) have stopped many guilds cold. There is at least one 7 day raiding Guild on Prexus that was stuck on him for close to 3 weeks. These two are just plain nasty. They put out a vast amount of damage and with their AE's and timed Adds can be damn tricky to deal with. So with much trepidation and the feeling that we will probably be doing this several times tonight, we engaged.

We had him positioned perfectly, the Clerics were in place, Pooby was laying the big smack down, and everyone was throwing everything they had at him. Slowly, slowly we whittled him down, he stayed positioned, DOTS were just hammering him. On a mob that I can lay everything on with no resists (NightFire, Blood of Thule, Funeral Pyre of Kelador, Saryns Kiss and Horror) I can be hitting a MOB for 1700+ a tick.

On Tallon I actually got 2 Crits in a single tick *hug CritDots3*, Horror for 1009 and BOT for 800ish, so that would have been about a 2500 tick!. I almost felt like a Wizzie!. Thank god I was FD at the time or I would have become a thin red Necro shaped smear.

As he went down we began to realize that we were going to win this. At 10% it was clear he was a dead Time God. But it wasn't till he died that we realized that this had been a flawless kill!. We didn't lose a single person, not even the puller!.

So after patting ourselves rapidly on the back we moved about 60 feet to the right and got ready for Vallon Zek. Now we have no idea how to handle any of these guys. The first attempt tactics don't really run beyond "we think he spawns adds sometime during the fight, dunno how many or when" so a new fight is always exciting. Vallon is going to be a pain in the ass, but he is definitely killable. We took 3 runs at him during the remainder of the raid, each time we got him to around 35% before his adds ran riot or he got loose and started to splat Clerics.

Anytime we can get a MOB under 50% on the first run I figure it is definitely killable. A few strat refinements (which I am sure better minds than mine are working on as I write this) and Vallon Zek too will die to Southern Armada!. Then its hello to Tier5!

We gave up on Vallon about 130am as our instance was about to time out. The rest of SA headed for Fire and a full pop was cleared as I understand. I headed off for bed and a long weekend of no EQ and heavy duty faction work to make up for 3 raids!.