Vanguard Southern Armada Raids Week Eleven

Monday 18.03.2008
I made it to the Sunday raid in good time and after the success they had last week in getting Wavebreaker to 10% I figured this was going to be a push over. The great post GU4 patch gods had something else to say about it. I wont go into too much detail other than to say, don't schedule raids less than 2 days after a major patch. We got hit with every glitch and problem you could think of, from the lag monster beating us repeatedly, to the log off and all the buffs you cast disappear to the I cant attack bug etc etc.

After last weeks hardware fiasco I am all raided up and good to go well before 7:45pm on Monday Night. There seemed to be a lot more tanks than usual tonight. Normally its Me and Garbar, or Me and Nymeria. Tonight we have both of them AND a Pally. Filthy do-gooding interloper be off!. So after the traditional "Good a pally to sac, it will be a great loot night!" jokes, we head into the Cartheon Wing and we are progressing pretty well to start. We power into the early stages of the tunnels looking for Izemgeli the Lorekeeper. We only had one small glitch in an other wise smooth ride when Garbar got hit with an knock back while facing the wrong way. He looked great as he sailed up and over the balcony and down into the water below, like a little Dwarvish falling star. Zel actually managed to get smacked over the edge as well, I'm not sure how Zel went over, but we had to wait for both to die before they could be rescued. Its easier to pull a tombstone up a level than it is to use /rope apparently.

As well as rescuing Zel and Garbar from their watery deaths, we also managed to kill Izemgeli the Lorekeeper. We decided to bypass the first side room in the cages and head straight for the second side room so we could set up for the Librarian. As we passed through the second cage room things started to get exciting. We managed to pull 2 mobs as we moved and were working on taking those out. As they were going down we picked up another roamer, then another, then another!. At one point we had at least 5 mobs in camp 2 of which were unmezzable, the tanks picked up the unmezzables fast, the healing never dropped, the crowd control was beautiful and the DPS never pulled a mob away from a tank. It was one of those fights that when you finish, take a deep breath and realise everything had just gone perfectly, in what could have been a very nasty CR. Unfortunately for us, after such a great fight the Librarian wasn't up. This is actually the second time we have come through and he hasn't been roaming the corridors. Either he is on some weird timer we don't know about, or he is bugged, you choose.

So we clear through the cages, drop down the lift and lay some smack on Varimurus the Subjugator. I like Varimurus, he is a fun fight, short sharp and just a little bit sweet!.

We cleared through the multi pulls on the way to Palnepipes room like they just weren't there and very quickly we were set up for Palnepipe. We had all roamers down, just him and his bodyguards waiting to die.

So its INC!, we split em and have them nicely positioned. The raid leaders have decided that we will kill each body guard slowly first, then take on Palnepipe. It was all going beautifully at first, Palnepipe was in place with Garbar holding him, we whittled down the first body guard and headed over to the second. He was about half way dead when we lost control of Palnepipe. We didn't realise at the time that Palnepipe has a nice long stun, as soon as Garbar was swaying in place the swine ran over and started to smack the healers around. Wipe.

So we set up and get ready again. At this point we are under a bit of time pressure as we really aren't sure of when the first re pops will begin. The split happens and we are good to go. This time we decide to change the order the body guards die in, we form up on the first bodyguard and start to cream him. He has an annoying knock back but seems to do a lot less damage than the other one who seems to have a hell of a lot more HP. He is about 50% down when Nymeria succumbs to the beating of the other bodyguard and its a wipe.

Third run, This time I stayed with Garb on Palnepipe so that we could try and get a tank transition happening. Its all going really well, Garb got stunned I picked up the named and we kept at it. We were just working on the first bodyguard when Nym died again, wipe. I don't know why Nym went down, he had good healers and he has more HP than me, maybe there is a damage spike in these bodyguards that we don't know about.

One thing we did learn. There is no safe spot in this room. As we were rezzing back in, the re pops began to appear. Repeated attempts to re-break the room failed and in the end we were forced to give up. The raid ended around 1145 and it was beddy bye time.

Thursday 21.03.08

Bad lag issues, bad post patch issues, No librarian, hows that for a summary. Actually there was a little more to it than that or this would be a damn short blog. We headed into Cartheon Wing and dropped Izemgeli the Lorekeeper.

The librarian isn't up again, so its straight through to Varimurus the Subjugator.

We are ready to rock in Palnepipes room by 9:40pm. We are all happy with this as it means we have all night to plug away at him. Its only an hour and forty minutes from entering the zone to his room. We form up and get the split happening. This time we decide to attack Palnepipe the Mastermind directly instead of his bodyguards. Garbar tanks him to start and I am picking up the rotation when he stuns, we easily get him down to 50% when Nym goes down again. More than likely caused by the nasty server lag we had been experiencing all evening. We wipe. Just as we are rezzing in to get ready for a second run at him, a server restart is announced. We hung on for about 40 minutes but the server didn't come up and there was no message on when it would come up. So the raid was called. I don't mind losing to a mob, I really don't, I HATE losing to lag, server glitches, restarts etc.


The Southern Armada logo, has for years been a crest of a sailing ship against a background of stars. We have used it on web pages, in custom Sigs, hell I even tried to get it onto a T-shirt. I lost a lot of images, including my complete collection of every custom sig I ever made when I came over to Sydney. Unfortunately this means that I don't have a copy of the old SA logo to work with. However as we were passing through APW we found the image below repeated all over the place. I am going to play with it and do my best to create it as a new logo.

----------------
Now playing: El Barto & Liam B - Don't dance
Now playing: Lobsterdust - Marley Maiden (from Exodus to Revelations)