Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty Six

31/05/04 Week Sixty Six

Well the week started off fairly simply with a quick Ragefire kill. There was a Guildie who needed him for his click-stick so a half dozen or so of us zoned into Skyfire and trounced him. This is the 3rd or 4th one of these I've done I think. I never get tired of killing Dragons and Giants!.

We also had a bit of a pickup Paffa kill. It was more for old times sake than any real hope the fat bastard was actually likely to drop anything useful. I think in the end we got a mask that someone happily took!. This guy is a joke, they put one of the most useful DOT class items in the game and made it so rare as to be an utter waste of time. Why, what was the point?. Rarity is good yes as its nice to be able to display a rare item to your friends and enemies. But the drop rate on this guy is just utterly ridiculous.

Monday rolled around, we rolled into Time and blitzed our way through 1,2,3.

If I was in a pickup group and this guy was this close to me, I would more than likely be looking at the "Loading.. Please Wait screen" shortly thereafter. Tier 3 is just a solid and fun Zergfest. Pull em fast, pull em hard, keep em coming. Monks die a lot in this tier it seems, but hey that's what they are there for!.

Once we zoned into Tier 4 we first went for Saryrn and Terris Thule. Both of these young ladies are solidly in "Pharmage" category for us now. Neither of them exactly give us much trouble.

Next up, the Zek Brothers. Vallon and Tallon. Not quite in the farmage category yet but getting close. We had to reset on the first run at Tallon but we have Vallon down to a fine art and rarely lose anyone to him.

That was it for Monday Night. There wasn't a whole lot all that exciting about it, it was a good solid Lewt Pharming run. One thing that was interesting tho, we can now easily clear through Tiers One, Two, Three and Four in a single night. Once we add some more DPS through drops and the over all power level of the guild increases, I believe we will be clearing Time in a single night easily.

Par for the course Sony patched and fucked up. The so called "further improvements in pathing and collision detection" for the new DirectX9 engine made MOB's un-wallable Now for those who don't raid on a regular basis there are essentially two primary ways to control a MOBs positioning during a fight. The first and most common is Cornering (also knowing as "AOW'ing the MOB"). Basically you shrink your MT as small as he/she will get, put him in a corner and everyone gets in behind the MOB. There is a very good reason for this on specific MOBs which I'm sure you can figure out yourself. The MOB faces the MT with is back exposed, simple enough.

The second method is "Walling" and is a little more complex. Basically the MOB and the MT face each other with one side hard against a wall. The rest of the melee place themselves in a 30 degree arc on the opposite side from the wall and the MT and they try to balance their "Push" against MOB movement, this is to keep the mob pinned against the wall and not moving.

Now the happy little Collision detection fix meant that both of these methods were impossible. As soon as any MOB in Time touched a wall it warped back to its spawn point and then began summoning the raid members one by one. This of course is a "Bad Thing"(TM). We learned that this was going on from Guilds who were raiding earlier than us, so with the anticipation of not being able to Corner or Wall any Time Gods we cleared through Tier 1 and headed for Tier 5.

First up of course was the AOE clearing of the Tier 5 Gods armies. This is fun and with all spell effects on is actually very pretty!.

First up, Rallos Zek. We have beaten him twice now, but not being able to corner an AOE rampaging MOB that gets tougher the longer he lives, makes this kill a hell of a lot harder. So we formed up, buffed up and went in. We had the adds under control and Rallos positioned in the center of the room, but the room positioning got away from us and Rallos began to rampage through the Tanks and the Clerics. Reset was called and we left him to his own devices while we rethought our strat and worked on a few other Gods.

Cazic Thule. This swine is the target I had been waiting for all week. We buffed up after Rallos, setup and pulled. I was sitting at my PC chanting "ROBE ROBE ROBE" as he died. He went down very easy, even having to keep him in the middle of the room wasn't too hard as he is a pretty straightforward tank fight. Pooby did a great job of walking him around the room with the melee all pushing him in little circles.

Kez kneeled over his prostrate corpse and I waited on the Lewtz messages. I had my "Yes Please" all typed and waiting. Woot there was the Robe! My tell went in and knuckles white I waited for the decision of the Officers. After some deliberation they awarded this to me! Woohoo!!!!!. That's an EQ dream complete for me. Many people sent me many nice tells and said many nice things to me that night. It was a hell of a great feeling!.

I remember being on Karana and sitting here at work as the Lewtz info from POP began to flow in. I remember seeing the info on Allakhazam's about the Time Silks and thinking, damn I will never see any of that. I will never get into POP, I will never get to Time!.

Well thanks to everyone in the guild I have achieved all of that. Everything from here on in is just cake as far as I'm concerned. In fact I now need something else to aim for. I was thinking maybe aiming for 7K buffed HP but that feels a little too lewt centric for me. I think I will just continue trying to max out my trade skills and then try and come up with another Goal. I have found without some sort of over arching goal I tend to get very bored with EQ very fast. Just aiming for the next AA really isn't that interesting to me. In fact I find XP comes a lot faster if I relax and don't actually try too hard for it.

I've been hanging out for the Robe as the last piece of a full set of Elemental silk. So for the last few months I haven't been sending tells on anything at all. Finally I can send tells again, to celebrate I even sent some tells on Melee Lewtz later on in the night!

Anyway. Summary.

Cazic Thule Dead. Robe (Me!) Bertoxxulos also dead shortly after.

Then we headed back to Rallos. So far we had Cazic and Berty under our belts, it was time for another shot at the big boy. There was much pessimism in the Necro Channel. I'm beginning to think that whenever the Necros think there is a fail on the cards, its almost a guaranteed indicator of success!.

So we pulled him, we positioned him and smoothly, he died. Not even a hiccup. We had to feed him a couple of Tanks, and quite a few Pallies were sacrificed to the Greater Gods of Phat Phat Lewtz, but in the end he snuffed it.

So with Rallos out of the way we faced up to the one God we still hadn't defeated. Innoruk, the God I chose as my Deity five years ago without having a clue what it meant. We still had the problem that we couldn't wall or corner him or his adds, he had to be kept in the center of the room and balanced perfectly. There was a quick strat session and we engaged.

The first 5 minutes or so of the fight went well. We had him positioned well, he was being kept stable in the middle of the room. Then his adds popped. Now we initially thought that they were free to roam, so we had snare/root teams assigned to keep them out of our hair. Unfortunately as they popped we found out they are in fact tethered, so the snare teams would pull them out and away from Inny and they would warp back.

So we now have Inny slowly dropping and 2K hitting adds rampaging through the raid. The pallies and offtanks stepped up, the snare teams did an amazing job of keeping them as occupied as they possibly could. They would finally get a snare/root on an Add and everyone just tried to move away. The Necros were just laying the smack down. I was throwing everything I possibly could at Innoruuk. DOT's, nukes, taps anything that would land.

As the fight progressed, Inny dropped further, more Adds popped, more people died and it got nastier and more unruly. We had adds all over the place, I got kicked by an add in passing for 800hp, they were crushing Clerics and Healers and slowly taking out the tanks. We had him below 10%, then 5%, then he was in Death Walk.

I was OOM and medding to be able to land taps on him. Taps are pretty cheap mana wise so I was just chaining him with Touch of Mujaki. I dropped a LifeBurn on him at about 5% or so. Man I wish that Life Burn could Crit. Suddenly he was at 0%, we had sod all people still up and the adds were still all over the place. I was nuking for all I was worth and all of a sudden he dropped like a stone. BAM the last God between us and Quarm hit the deck.

We still hadn't finished with this fight yet. Most of the guild was down and we still had a butt load of deep red adds alive. I was completely OOM having dropped my wad on Inny so as the tanks were engaging the remaining Adds, I was medding to try and be able to still contribute to the fight. I was throwing out a few Dots here and there and dumping to clerics when I got dropped by a roamer. Suddenly there was all this red spam on my screen and I was dead before I was even aware of the first hit.

We were rezzing like mad to try and bring as many people as possible back into the fight as it was still balanced on a knife edge. I ran back through the tiers to Tier 5 and just as I reached my corpse a Rezz window popped up in front of me, I took the rezz, looted and began to med again. In the 2 minutes it took me to zone back to Tier 5 the whole situation had changed.

From being down to about 15 people still in zone as Inny dropped we now had enough tanks to cope and the Clerics and Healers seemed to be back in the fight. The Root/Snare teams were keeping their mobs locked down and we were back under control again. To me there was never a feel of desperation, or "we may lose this", it was always just a feeling of "oops, there was a bit of a boo boo but we can beat this".

Finally the last of the ads dropped., Everyone was rezzed back in and Kez called the raid to Tier 6 and Quarm.

There he was. The end of a year and a quarter road. Quarm. We had absolutely no idea about this fight beyond you need all resists as high as possible. So we pulled him, we engaged and we got him to 78% on our first try. With no prep and no knowledge of the fight I thought that was pretty damn good. 3% more and he would have dropped a head. To me that means he is eminently killable and he will die within the next week or two.

I feel a "State of the Game" coming on and I am currently working on it. It will more than likely go up with this weeks update.

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.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty Four

15/05/04 Week Sixty Four

This weeks update bought to you late thanks to TooMuchWorkToDo, MyBossIsAway, Eminem and Last Nights Raid.

Oops was that Time Tier's 1, 2 and 3?. We seem to have skipped our way past them without noticing. I think we will still have the odd hiccup with these Tiers but on the whole we have them pretty much down.

ooo Ooo Pick me Pick me!

Avatar of the Elements being eaten alive by Horror

Finally we got through Tiers 1,2,3 and on to the fun stuff. Tier 4!. The call was for Tallon Zek and Vallon Zek to die first, so we formed up and engaged Tallon first. Why Tallon?, well mainly cause of the two brothers he is the easiest, but secondarily because we need his room. *wink wink* There you go, there's a leet strat for you!.

Waiting to Die

Don't worry your turn will come

Tallon went down pretty easy, not quite a perfect kill but close. I really need to go and buy a lot more resist gear. I have a bunch of PR/DR gear but its becoming obvious that I need more Magic/FR and probably ultimately CR gear as well. One thing no-one tells you when you are gearing up for Time, its all about resists.

They look remarkably similar when dead Don't you think?

The Guild killed Vallon last week but this was my first turn at him. Once we had the adds figured out and how to handle them he went down pretty easy. We had a bit of an issue once he was dead tho. It seems the Clerics decided that since they had kept the MT alive for the entire Vallon fight they would go and have a wee rest. So when the tanks started to engage the Adds they went down like ninepins!. From all the cursing from the tanks I would assume they weren't very happy about that!.

Then came Cazic Thule. He is a very basic Model and a very old one, but he is still one of my favorites in the game. The last time I engaged this guy was on Karana in the Plane of Fear with The Silent Watch. TSW had their asses handed to them 3-4 times before they managed to drop him. Southern Armada dropped his bigger oh-so-very-much-badder brother first time.

The other reason he is my favorite MOB is that he drops my Robe. I just need the Robe to complete my ensemble. At that point I can go back to regular LewtzHoring. I spent sooooo long trying to finish my ToV silks and never managed it. I am absolutely determined to finish my Miragul's silk set. One piece needed, the Robe and I'm done!

Unfortunately it just wasn't to be on Thursday, and the Robe was awarded to a feelthy Wizzie!. Grats Arradien on being the first Time Silk robe in the Armada! (I'm so jealous mate:) ) It looks very cool with that shiny forehead!. Its going to look better on me of course!

The came Rallos Zek. Much like his lower planes counterpart this guy has caused us a bit of trouble. Now Rallos is my favorite model in the game bar none, but I do prefer to see him flat on his back.

We had him, we fucking had him and then...

I Don't know how but someone somehow managed to aggro the Guards in front of Innoruuk on the other side of the room damn it. We were down to the last set of adds, Rallos was dieing smoothly and suddenly we had a half dozen denizens of Hate to contend with as well. We tried, we almost had it, we were still killing Rallos, his adds were being handled and the Innoruuk adds were being off tanked as well. Then we seemed to just run out of healers and the off tanks started to die. Kez called the reset and we aborted. Damn.

So lessons learned; Clear ALL the guards in front of the Gods in Tier 5 before engaging.

So, frustrated and pissed off we turned our eyes to Bertoxxulous. We had to wait for Tank disciplines to reset before we could take another shot at Rallos, so we had 10-15 minutes to wait, so we took our first shot at Bert. I was extremely surprised, he died first try. I really didn't think a Tier 5 God would be that easy to kill!. Mr Berty died fairly fast and gave up his Lewtz for the good of SA.

Then it was time for Rallos again. Unfortunately we had about 6 people leave at this point and that lack of firepower hurt us. We engaged and it was going beautifully!. The adds were handled and Rallos was going down cleanly. Then an off tank died, then an MT died, then another, then another off tank and the effects just snowballed.

So at 3% Rallos escaped us. I swear I could hear the fat bastard laughing at us as he stalked back over our prone bodies to his spawn spot. Bastard.

He dies next week.

Now as I was preparing for the Raid this week I received a somewhat extraordinary tell. I do not know if this was from a Guildies Alt, from someone on EQ IM, it didn't appear to be cross server but I couldn't reply and the person didn't show up as online on Prexus. I havent seen or heard from this person again.

Maybe they sent it exactly as they were about to log out I don't know. But Brigin doesn't seem to be a fan of SA for some reason.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty Three

10/05/04 Week SixtyThree

Today's update is brought to you by TooMuchCaffiene(tm), Nickelback, NotEnoughSleep(tm), Stress and the letters NAI.

We rule, we rock and Quarm's days are numbered. We blew through the first 4 Tiers of Time like they weren't even there. Tier One was just destroyed, we didn't even have a minor hiccup. This is the Southern Armada I just love to watch in action. I honestly doubt that when we turn up with our game faces on, that there is a guild better than us, anywhere in the game.

I don't think its a big boast. I've seen one of the top 4 guilds in the game in action and we are every bit their equal.

Oh God, here they come again.

We are finished, open the damn door 

Now the last time we did Tier 2 we had all sorts of problems with multiple group wipes, bad pulls, ghosting etc. This time we just blitzed it. I was in the group doing Fire/Water and our DPS seemed enormous, I couldn't even get a Neurotoxin off before the target died. I was reduced to tapping with Touch of Mujaki (3.2 sec cast time) to even be able to actually do some damage.

Tier three arrived way too soon and we steamrollered our way through it. There were always 2-3 Mobs in camp and more on the way. We had one hiccup early on in the piece where we lost a lot of people suddenly to a rogue Giant, but we recovered fast and simply started to pull faster.

Finally we reached the boss Mobs of Tier 2. Now normally we would do the usual thing of putting Pooby in front of the mob and letting them beat on him till they got tired. Then we usually sacrifice a Shammy or 2-3 Pallies to the Great Gods of PhatLewtz and then the mob would die. However the Druids have been getting pissed off with this. They are bitching that they "never get to do anything" and that "speed heals on the tanks are boring".

The problem is that when you actually try and get them to kill anything they wont, cause its "against Tunare" or some such crap, they complain that killing stuff is all just too violent.

So just to be a little different, on the second boss kill we sent in Pooby (As usual), sacrificed a Shammy (sorry about that Boss) and then the Druids began to cast some happy fluffy spells. Apparently the spell generates great big floating balls of soft stuff and they essentially tickled the target to death.

He laughed for hours and hours and hours...

I basically logged after the Boss Mobs finally stopped giggling and headed for bed. The Armada moved on and dropped Terris and Saryrn before the finished. I had to be up ridiculously early for a flight to Wanganui (and yes you can say "where the fuck is that?", I know I did. So there was no second raid this week as I ended up down there for 2 nights damnit.

Of course since I was away SA dropped Vallon Zek and Tallon Zek and entered Tier 5 for the first time on Thursday night. Happy it happened but pissed off that I missed it. Next week its time to clear Tier 5 and move on to Quarm