Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Thirty Four

15/10/03 Week ThirtyFour
Well last Friday's raid just didn't happen. We should have known really. Typical SOE patch process seems to run something like this;

1. Throw some Code together from all the bits and pieces you have tried out at various times and in various combination's that you may or may not have tested on the Test server. If you did test it, completely ignore anything sent in by the people on the test server as to any problems that they may have had with the patches.

2. Put the patch code live and completely fuck up everything, emergency patch to fix the really significant fuckups within 12 hours. Deny any problems at all.

3. Second emergency patch to fix the fuckups we either didn't fix with the first emergency patch or that we actually caused with the first emergency patch. Continue to deny any problems at all.

4. Refuse to admit that anything changed, refuse to admit that we broke anything at all and to all the people now reporting errors with EQ that they have never had before, cut and paste a "Its your fault not ours" standard reply on the tech support boards.

The gist of this is that I gave up trying to log on at 1:30AM my time and went to bed. SA managed to get a few people on after the patch and had a go at a couple of the POE rings. Monday nights attempt was a lot better. I am studying at the moment so I logged on quite late to see what the targets were, rather than my usual logon and try and get a group or two before the Raid.

First call was to the Elemental Plane of Fire for Blazzax the Omni Fiend. We have never done this MOB so I was really looking forward to this kill. We all headed out to POF and zoned in, I hung about for the first 20 minutes or so to DMF any people zoning in, and then Usurp volunteered as the COH mule and I headed into the castle.
We set up and began clearing the trash.

A Magma Rocklord

As we were prepping for Blazzax, a stroke of luck!, POP hello Criare Sunmane. As we were already set up for the OmniTwit we pulled our first Phoenix!

He died pretty fast, but not before my first death of the night and after eating a few tanks. For some reason our DPS last night just sucked. We had about 60 on the raid but we just didn't seem to be pumping the DPS the way I know we can. So after rebuff, we got reset and inc was Blazzax the Omnifiend!!. Unfortunately we slightly underestimated the range of his AOE.That was death number two for me. Its all good, as they say death is a learning experience, so after a bit of adjustment of tactics we pulled him again. This time he was going to die! I do love this model!, this is SUCH a cool looking mob to fight.

Now many people ask me, where do we get our 'Leet strats?, do we have spies in other guilds?, is there a secret message board that Uber Guild leaders post on?. I cant answer for any other guild, but I can tell you where SA gets their strats. Now this is a secret and you cant tell ANYONE got it!?.

The secret is in fact a person!. There is one person in the guild who is able to extract secrets from Mobs, he can charm them, talk to them, get them to tell him about their friends and how to kill their nearest neighbors!. After every kill he moves to the corpse and communes with the dead spirit of the Mob.

He is Attann the Ass Whisperer!

And that's how we get our Strats! After the PhatLewts was handed out we headed out to visit "The Wise" in the Elemental Plane of Water. I hate POW. Its even laggier than normal. However, the one and only good thing about the zone is that nothing in here resists anything I can throw at it. So at the end of the Wise fight, shortly before I got summoned and mashed into paste I had FP, BOT, DP, SK, EBolt all running on Grioihin the Wise.

With around 1k a tick running on Mr Wise, BOT wore off, I stood up from FD to recast and *Summon*

Eeeek! he is WAY to close!

Splat.
Now this was a damn messy, but a really fun fight. Any fight I can REALLY lay the hurt on a Mob is fun to me. The AOE stun he has makes life a little difficult tho and we ended up feeding him tanks again, but hey that's what tanks are for :) The raid reformed and headed to POAir for some beatings of name's over there. It was still relatively early, only 1.15AM but of the team of 5 that I work with, we are down 2 long term and another short term. So there is a need for me to be relatively awake and paying attention in the mornings.

So with much regret I logged and left SA to the next set of targets. Hopefully this Friday will be huge!

Yes I know I am damn late. I am about 10 days behind on raids at this point. People are saying " are you not maintaining the web site anymore?". Well actually I am, but at the moment the team of 5 that I work with on a regular basis is down to 3 and one of those we are missing is the boss. Add to that a rather nasty outbreak of the W32/Nachi worm in a regional office this week and its been a hell of a ten days or so.

A wee piece of advice to any corporate types who may ever read this. There is no such thing as 100% protection against Virii. You WILL get Viruses, its only a matter of time. The question you must always ask is "What happens then?". How will you contain the attack, how will you clean it up?, how will you even know it is happening?. Do you have a dedicated (or even semi dedicated) Anti Virus/Security officer? or do you rely on the typical "she'll be right, it will never happen to us" attitude?.

Anyway enough of the real world, on to Everquest!(tm)

We logged in Friday and the MOTD was listing a bunch of targets from PoFire to Kael Drakkal. Kez made the call that we were going to have another go at Rallos Zek, so off the the Fortress of Zek we all traipsed. As I zoned in I brought up the Raid tool and checked numbers. Ooooo boy we were really light. Now for those who have never engaged him most guilds usually take on Rallos with 80+.

Those who are inside the raid do all the DPS, positioning of Rallos Zek the Warlord, healing etc etc. Those who are outside the raid do all the controlling of the Adds, kiting etc etc. Guilds who have been farming in the Plane of Time for a while have been known to do him with less than 50. Once again those guilds are 7 day a week raiders, VERY well equipped. We were about to engage Rallos Zek the Warlord with 56 in the Raid!

Now I have seen Southern Armada doing some amazing stuff with very small numbers, so instead of doubting Kez, I simply put my mind to it and said "we can do this". First up was the run through the Halls of Zek, clearing through trash, killing triggers and massacring our way past the Zek Brothers.

Tallon

Vallon getting rooted

Rallos Zek

The Tallon fight was a little lumpy, I can only assume people were still getting warmed up, maybe the beer was warm in Aussie and they were having trouble getting the first one down?, I really don't know. But there was some damn fast rezzing going on before Vallon was inc. We got up to Vallon and obviously the beer had started to flow as that fight went extremely smoothly. Rallos Zek went down clean as a whistle (did we lose anybody?) and it was Rallos Zek the Warlord time!.

Unfortunately as the Pet getters were getting their pets they got a little over enthusiastic and started to wipe themselves out with an over pull. We were already damn close to time so it was Rallos INC ready or not!. I popped my pet from suspend and sent him in and just started laying on the Dots. I had even unloaded my survival spells (except FD) and was just laying the full load on him.

Slowly, slowly his HP dropped. Now I am facing the wall at this point so I had no idea what was going on behind me, but I gather it was a hell of a mess with massive numbers of adds everywhere and the kiters exerting Heroic effort to keep them away from the raid. We almost had the fat bastard!. I was finally dropped by Rallos himself, with him at 6%. SO CLOSE!.

So we reformed, Rezzed up and headed in again.

Second Tallon kill, FlawlessSecond Vallon Kill, Flawless

Second Rallos kill, Flawless

And minutes later we were back at Rallos Zek the Warlord again. This time the Pet guys spent a little more time and didn't try and wipe themselves. Once everyone was ready we pulled.This would have been a flawless kill as well. We did absolutely everything right. Positioning, Aggro control, healing everything was perfect. We managed to get him to 6% again before the adds overwhelmed us. We just didn't have the DPS with the number of people we had exactly 56 on engage again. A little longer farming the planes, a few more high DPS weapons, a few more AA here and there and this guy will definitely be in the "farmable by 50" range.

I think Kez was a little disappointed that we didn't manage to drop him, but I was happy as hell. I doubt anyone else at our level could have gotten him to 6% with the numbers we had. We will do him again many times I am sure, we need at least 3-4 more BoW's for a start!.

Be proud Kez, be damn Proud!