This
was our first full shot at Time. Well our first with a decent
chance of clearing it anyway. Now normally I just briefly go on
about the fight and move on. This edition I'm going to talk about
each fight individually in a little more detail.
Tier
One
Tier
one is so mindless as to be numbing. The only time most guilds
will ever have any issues with T1 is when they first encounter
it. If you are still having trouble with T1 after about the 2nd
week in Time then you really have no place in the zone. Basically
it works like this. There are 5 "Trials". Earth, Air,
Water, Undead, Fire. Each Trial requires 3 groups, so 54 people
are needed to be available to kick them off. Of course everyone
hates doing them week after week, so most people don't even show
up till tier 3-4.
I don't mind doing them that much, so I usually show up for them.
We have them down to a fine art at this point so they don't take
that long anymore.
Each
trial has its own little quirks and idiosyncrasies but on the
whole they aren't too difficult. The issue I always have with
T1 is, why the fuck do we have to do it every time?. Each other
part of time is instanced, why not T1?. Combine that fact with
the issue that if another Guild has been in Time inside of 12
hours before you, you get no loot from T1.
That's
completely crap. I've heard the justification that the 12 hours
thing is to stop people "farming" the T1 Items (which
are doable with 3groups.) So why not fully instance Time and make
us do T1 once a week just like all the other sections of the Zone?.
Why are we denied the T1 loot simply because another guild is
leaving Time just as we are forming up to enter it?
I
don't like it, I think its unfair and stupid.
Tier
Two
Tier
Two is basically an extension of Tier One. Once you have completed
all of the first 5 Trials the doors at the back of each trial
open and you have access into Tier 2. Now T2 is essentially still
a part of T1 and in some cases we actually pull T2 into the area
of the T1 trials and kill the mobs there. Again there are 5 trials
in T2, Earth, Air, Water, Undead, Fire. Its basically a bunch
of trash (about 10-20 per trial) and a boss at the end. T2 will
always drop loot and is fully instanced. So you only ever have
to do T2 once a week.
Tier
Three
This
is the most mindless and punishing part of Time. I truly loathe
T3 already. Its busy for the Pullers, the tanks and the healers,
but for the Necro's its horrible. I basically put my pet away
( too many enrages and too many "fake" enrages so you
end up doing sod all dps with pet and having way too many of them
go smish.)
Most Mobs die too fast for me to land Neurotoxin (6.0 sec cast
time) and DOT's are a complete waste of mana so I am reduced to
tapping with Touch of Mujaki (850damage 3.2 sec cast time) and
when there are undead in the wave, with Destroy Undead (1200 damage,
3 sec cast time) Basically its incredibly boring for a Necro and
I usually spend T3 with half an eye on the TV.
You
have a series of "Waves" of mobs representing the armies
of the Gods. So you get to see Mob's from the Elemental planes
of Nightmare, Tactics, Fear, Hate and Torment. Once you clear
through them (and there is about 100+ Mob's) you then get to face
two fairly easy Bosses.
T3
is also fully instanced so you only do it once a week.
Saryrn
Saryrn
is usually the first of the Tier 4 Gods that we kill. She is the
(Demi)God of the Plane of Torment. She is a pretty easy fight
and is very similar to her counterpart in the Elemental Planes.
She AE's a nasty mana drain that can cause issues if you don't
resist it and spawns adds at certain points in the fight.
Some
adds you ignore, some you off tank. On the whole a fairly fun
fight and fairly simple. A good introduction to the rest of the
God's in the plane of Time.
Terris
Thule
This
is again a similar fight to the one in the Plane of Nightmare
and very similar to Saryrn. Nasty HP/Mana drain AE and adds that
show up at certain points during the fight. Both of these fights
are trivial to us at this point and we very rarely ever lose anyone.
They are pretty much just warm ups for the later kills.
Tallon
Zek
I
like the Zek brothers fights as they are relatively simple straight
tank/dps affairs. You put Tallon into a corner and just pack the
DOTs on him. The pet gets unloaded and just sits on his back tapping
and backstabbing like mad. As long as Tallon keeps that nasty
ass bow pointed at the main tank, he is a dead God.
Vallon
Zek
The
only real difference between Tallon and Vallon is that Vallon
spawns adds at a certain percentage that need to be kited and
kept away from the Healers and the DPS. Apart from that its exactly
the same strategy as Tallon, put the pet up his ass, Dot the hell
out of him, remember to FD a lot, then Loot!.
Bertoxxulous
Now
Berty is a little different. He doesn't spawn adds but he is almost
completely immune to almost all spells until he hits about 80%
health. So once again the marvelous invention that is corner tanking
comes into play. Unfortunately you have to hide the pet for this
one as he has a dot that will quite quickly take a pet out. Unless
you want to keep continuously healing the pet, its best to just
put him away till later.
Nec's
pretty much cant do anything to him till about 80-85% when you
can start to land Fire based spells, the Magic and Poison based
spells start to land around 70%. Then you can just burn him.
Cazic
Thule
Now
I like Mr Thule, not only because he has been particularly good
to me (Time Robe, Wand of Impenetrable Force, Zealots Spiked
Bracer) but because he is a fun and fast fight. Again you have
to keep the pet hidden as Mr Thule has a 1K AOE DD that will slowly
wear him away. He gets tanked by Pallies, which is cool and I
can lay pretty much every DOT I have on him with no resists which
is also very cool.
Rallos
Zek
One
of the Big boys of the Elemental planes. He was the road block
to progress of a lot of Guilds and much cursing and swearing has
been directed his way. Curiously he isn't that hard to kill in
Time. Standard (by now) corner fight, adds at intervals, AOE fight.
I still think he is the best model of POP.
I
was very curious to learn that the POP God models were all outsourced
from SOE to a 3rd party company. Whoever it was that they used I would highly recommend they use them again. All of the MOB modeling
in POP is superb, from the early models of the flies in POD to
Quarm himself, I've enjoyed the "look" of each one.
God
is a real disappointment in that there are about 6 base models
and no "Bosses". So once you have seen the base models
there is nothing to look forward to. It also makes it confusing
as the only way to tell the difference between a boss and trash
is the name.
Innoruuk
My
God. The Lord of Hate. Probably the toughest fight in Time. If
anything possibly even a tougher fight than Quarm. His AOE is
a fear spell which can cause half your raid to be running around
the T4 zone at any given time. He spawns some NASTY adds that
will happily decimate your Clerics or Tanks if they get the chance
and are damn hard to control.
I
actually felt that SA's finest moment in Time was dropping this
guy for the first time. We did it by the skin of our teeth,but
we did it with skill, guts and determination. Quarm was almost
an anti-climax when we finally did it.
Quarm
The
big boy, the target we had been aiming for right from the very
beginning of POP a year ago. Its kind of sad that he is just another
target on the Pharm list now. He has about 7 AOE's some worse
than others, and he still feels a little like a zerg sometimes,
but the hardest part of killing him now is sorting the groups
before the engage.
One
of our artistic types made this Target ring. I love it, it makes
it so easy to find a small target in a big group of melee and
it just plain looks cool.
I've
been having a good think about my foci and I have come to a sad
realization. There are only two paths forward to replace my most
important Focus. The shield
I am carrying has Affliction efficiency 4 on it. This is a 25%
mana reduction on all DOTs cast. There are a number of other AE4
items in the game, some better but most worse than the shield.
However
there are only 2 items in game that have the upgrade to this focus.
One drops in Trial 7 of GOD and is a bracer
with stats about the same as the Tier One Time bracers. The other
is an earring
that drops from Vallon
Zek. This is utterly pathetic itemization on the behalf of
SOE but its what we are stuck with. Now to replace the focus on
the Shield I have to wait on the earring drop which is driving
me nuts.
A:
Both my earrings suck and as earrings are almost completely all/all
items the competition for them is fierce,
B: I don't have another upgrade path and I cant afford to lose
this focus, so until I can get an earring I'm stuck with the shield.
I already have an item I can use to do a small upgrade on the
shield, which is currently sitting in the bank.
So
like my quest to get a full set of silks, I am sitting and patiently
waiting for the right sequence of drops. :)
Thursday
rolls around and The Southern Armada roll into the Gates of Discord
for our first GOD Raid.
After
doing the first two I can now see what all the uber guilds are
complaining about. Instead of unique bosses, well designed zones
and unique encounters you have cookie cutter zones, cookie cutter
encounters and the same 5-6 models throughout the entire expansion.
I can now understand my SOE decided to apologize for this expansion.
Its a steaming pile of shit.
So
we formed up in Kod'Taz for the raid and began to clear through
the zone to the raid entry point. Essentially you have to clear
through the zones trash to actually reach the instanced area of
the Raid itself.
We
zoned into the first of the Ikkinz Trials and killed a bunch of
these
guys.
Beyond,
pull mob, kill mob, charge Boss (who looks exactly like all of
the other MOB models in the zone) there isn't a great deal of
difficulty to the first Trial. I must admit there is some awesome
loot
to be found in Ikkinz but that's never been the point of the game
for me. Its about the hunt for the next named and the thrill of
the "special" kill. Without that its just farming.
So
we get to the end of Trial One, kill a named (That looked exactly
like all the others) and that was kind of it. there was no emoticon,
no flag message, no new key on the key ring.
We
left trial one completed and headed into Trial 2 which was exactly
the same as Trial one, pull mob, kill mob, charge boss. I had
to leave at 2:00am for sleepy bo bo's. SA continued on for about
another hour to drop the Tier 2 boss.
Yay I'm now only a week behind!
