Ikkinz
Trial 4. This was our second run at this Trial and we were
hoping on being a lot faster and a lot cleaner this time as we
now had some idea of how each encounter was going to go.
Thankfully
with this trial there isn't the umpteen million trash mobs to
clear through, so all you have to do is prep for each named. I
also remembered to bring my Research kit and my Fletching kit
for the key combines this time. So I didnt have to go porting
out of the raid zone and running across the world again.
First
up are the Altar
Wardens. There are two of these, left and right and they are
an easy kill. This is a fairly straightforward, pull and fast
heal the tank fight. In fact they die so fast its really hard
for me to be mana efficient. They die too soon to really load
up DOTs on them, Neuro simply resists, so all I can really do
is send the pet and chain Tap.
Next
up are the Altar
Sentries, again two of them, left and right. Despite the dungeons
being "Cookie Cutter" in layout there are the odd touches
here and there of cool design. I quite like this view of the Altar
Sentry (which to my point of view is a huge model, bigger than
an Oggie) standing below a massive statue of one of the Elf guys.
Now
the Altar Sentries have a wee bit of a twist to them, they are
what's known as "Class Kills". The way these guys work
is that when you kill them you will get an emote after they die
about which class needs to actually get the kill shot. If you
are lucky they will just die, if not you will get something like
"the Altar Sentry is vulnerable to the flashing blades of
Holy Knights". The Sentry then re spawns back at his bind
point.
Once
you know which class needs to kill the Sentry you pull him again,
at 5% everyone backs off and only the requisite class continues
doing damage until it dies.
Then
comes the Altar
Overseer, or "The Pit Guy" as he is known. Now this
is a fun fight. You engage the Overseer who is standing in a large
bowl surrounded by guardian statues, at various points in the
fight he calls the statues to his aid and they wake up and go
straight for the Clerics. You have to have off tanks picking them
up and engaging them as fast as possible. It doesn't have to be
for long as the adds only last for a few seconds and then wander
back to where they came from.
This
is one of the few fights in Ikkinz 4 that I can actually partially
unload on. This guy takes about 2 minutes to kill, so I can actually
get a Horror, BOT and an NightFire on him before he dies. Of course
only Horror runs full course but never mind.
After
this there are a couple of encounters that I actually couldn't
get decent screen shots of. As you are probably able to guess
at this point, the models are all exactly the same so its not
like you are missing a lot by not having screen shots.
There
are the two Phantasmal
Priest Guardians. These guys have an AE Gflux which is kind
of fun. One minute you are casting away happily and the next you
are 30 feet in the air against the roof and half way across the
room. We didn't manage to split them and the first pull we got
both of them. The kiters couldn't pull them off the MT and the
raid wiped slowly.
We
recovered quickly (The lost art of the raid wipe and recover is
slowly returning to us) and the next pull we just off tanked one
while we killed the other, that worked perfectly and we were quickly
moving up to the next fight.
After
the Phantasmal Priest Guardians come the Curate
Fire Tenders. Again no screen shots and just straight up fights.
Then
you get to the Oracle
of the Altar, he is really more about clearing the way to
the Altar
Construct who is the really hard kill of the zone. The Construct
randomly spawns adds. The problem is that you never know how many
there are going to be. They hit for 1800, some are mezzable some
aren't and very simply if you get too many spawning you are going
to wipe.
This
to me is very poor encounter design, there doesn't seem to be
any rhyme nor reason to how many adds spawn, so there is no way
for the players to mitigate the numbers. Simply put, you need
to do this encounter till you get an amount of adds that you can
handle. Until you get that number you just keep aborting / wiping
over and over. If you are lucky you may only have to do it 1-2
times, if you aren't and the RNG is against you then you can do
this dance all night.
Finally,
the boss of the zone and the Key mob. This is the Keeper
of the Altar. After the Oracle of the Altar fight this one
is fairly simple. He spawns adds, you keep them off the Clerics
and you BURN him hard. This is the guy I always save LifeBurn
for. Once he dies he spawns the little skeleton piles that come
with all of the other kills in the Ikkinz trials. In these little
skele piles are chunks of stone and rock. You only get as many
flags as you have people alive at the end of the fight.
I
fucked up at this point. I thought that the above message that
flashes up on the screen was the flag. It wasn't, the flags are
actually the chunks of rock in the skeleton piles. Unfortunately
I didn't know this and I looted one without being told. Now one
of the BIGGEST no no's on an SA raid is to loot anything without
being told. I know this, I've always known this. I was tired is
all I can say and not paying attention properly.
So
after being thoroughly reamed out by a number of people, not least
of which was Kezlar, I was feeling suitably stupid. Anyway, the
remainder of the flags were handed out and I will be there for
the next ikinz4 kill as well. So I will do my bit to make up for
it by going back to Ikkinz 4 as many times as is required, just
like all the other back flagging.
The
remaining Raid of the week was Time. We flew through this and
set a guild record of 4 hours 55 minutes to clear the whole Zone.
Just
recently NZ has had a number of really cold snaps. There have
been a number of raid nights where I have been sitting in front
of my PC and its less than 5C in the room. So in a couple of occasions
(this Time raid and a few in the following weeks) I have had to
log just to go to bed and get warm. I don't like it but when you
cant type or press a mouse button because you are shivering so
much you don't really have a choice.
Hopefully
in the next 2 months I am moving anyway, so I will be in a place
where I can be warm, comfortable and raid.
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