Mid Kara Battles

Making the transition from early kara to mid kara is somewhat interesting.

For new raiders, you've got enough of a taste of trash respawn timers to keep you moving swiftly.

You've got enough of a taste of complex boss fights to know that you've got to read up on the encounters.

You've got enough peer pressure to at least know that consumables are important, and perhaps even take it to heart and bring enough of them.

You've got enough of a taste of RL pressure to know that showing up on time and using that time efficiently is important.

You've had enough time since you first started raiding and discovered what Hit and Spell Hit ratings are to now be mostly all hit capped.

Along the way, you've gotten better gear which makes the farm-status fights easier and more plentiful. You've also got better familiarity with the fights so less time wasted explaining or strategizing.

Depending upon how 1337 your team is, a few weeks or a few months later, you're reliably nailing the Curator. Partying with Chess.

Soon enough, its time for more and more of the big leagues action.

Not sure whether to call it the mid- or upper-kara sections, but we keep on trukin'!!

Shade of Aran. Last week was our first visit to him. Wipes galore with no kill the first night. Wipes galore with a wonderful beautiful dead boss on the second night.

Then you get to this weekend, and our second raid week to be visiting the Shade. We know we can kill him, the question is how much was luck and will be able to repeat?

Wipe. Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.

Seems Aran either targets a healer nearly instantly with some un-interrupted arcane missiles or fire bolts. Or people forget to run out of the Arcane Explosion.

Any time we made it to the Water Elementals, we just didn't focus fire properly, or we'd get caught in one of the other spells (-Explosion, -Wreath, -Zzard) while chasing down the adds.

Fifth try....Aran joins his buddies Attumen, Moroes, and Romulo in digital h3ll.

Once again by the skin of our teeth, but we did kill him. A little more solid victory than the first time, so we're getting closer and closer to calling this a "not-quite-farm-status-but-definitely-plan-on-killing-him-each-week" fight.

Aran died on the second night of our 3 night raid week. In prep for the third and final night, we go to try out Terestian Illhoof, so that reading about the fight later will make more sense. Smell you later.

Third night. Teleport up to Shade's room, which is clutch. That's a long run up the back stairs and through all the cleared trashy hallways.

Clear that one single room of stupid demons. Aside: did they buff that room with 2.4? Something tells me we trapped and shackled some of those guys last week, but this week they all seem immune. Maybe I'm just crazy?

Illhoof. Now we're talkin'. No trashy trash. No fartin' around. Get us to the boss fight!

Everybody's got their targeting macro, right?

What's a macro?

Uggy uggy uggy. Haven't you been using them to target Astral Flares on Curator? Nope? I suppose that 'splains the two-fold DPS difference between #1 and #2 on the WWS report for the fight.

Go go go, hit up wowwiki and copy-paste the macro. Quick like a bunny. Spam it any time Amava calls out "Demon Chains" or "Kil'Rek" over voice. Or when said demon chain or kil'rek dies, spam it once more.

4 or 5 tries. Got him to 14% and 6% at our best. No kill, but definitely doable with a little more practice and faster timing on target switching (ie, macro spamming).

Everybody learned what Super Mana Potions are and why you like to bring 4 or 5 stacks of them to raids. The Warlock learned that he needs to bring piles and piles of sharts to Illhoof night.

After the wipes, we decided to explore around some more. Found our way up to the Prince. Why not?

This fight seems pretty cool. I love the wide open terrace, seems to be SOOO much space to run around in.

Once the Infernals start to drop, seems to be NOOOOO space to run around in.

Enfeeble + Shadow Nova = Dead Raid

Really cool visual effect though, and the epic scale of the battle field is feels neat.

Just an exploration fight, so no real progress, but helps make the wiki writeup easier to visualize.

Definitely fun to be getting into more and more fights that none of the raid members have ever seen before. You can feel the pioneer spirit!

And I suppose Prince would count more as Upper Kara than Mid Kara, but that was just sticking our toes in the water. Mid Kara is where we're rompin and stompin right now.