Amava's guild has a bunch of people who have indicated interested in completing the Champion of the Naaru quest line.
Its been a month and a half since the first wave of titles came with our first Magtheridon kill. Facing the expansion and the obsoleteness of the current raid dungeons, we've pretty much removed Gruul and Maggy off the schedule.
So, in an effort to help people who want the title, I put a 2-hour Gruul / Magtheridon killing spree on the calendar, two weeks in advance. In addition to this, I set the guild message of the day to include some indication of the "last chance at title, check calendar" concept for the whole two weeks. And on top of that, I put a thread in the guild forum asking for people desiring the title to post where they are in the quest chain so we can try to help folks out.
So along comes sunday. About 40 minutes before the raid, I ask out on gchat "who is up to the Gruul/Maggy steps of the title quest line?" since I'm trying to form up the raid and as such, want to give preference to members who will get the title.
Nothing.
Ok, wait 10 minutes. Ask again.
Nathan.
Ok, wait 10 more minutes. Ask again.
Nada.
Oh well. I suppose they want the title, but not quite bad enough? Or maybe want it but not have time to complete the heroics?
Talk it over with the officers and come up with a real "LAST CHANCE, THIS TIME WE MEAN IT" gruul/maggy run for next sunday.
And head up for another visit to Al'ar.
It must be truely awe inspiring for a raid to hear their Raid Leader and Hunter Extraordinaire announce the misdirection assignments, and only seconds later, when he was supposed to misdirect skull onto main tank for first pull, messes up and misdirects onto his pet, who gets one-shot, and a brief period of chaos as the main tank skillfully regains control of the fight.
Oopsie.
Condoleezza still isn't talking to me.
Get to Al'ar.
Wipe twice, pretty much due to about 2k DPS too little.
We really didn't have a chance, even if people survived the firey effects in Phase 2 (which they didn't). Just too little damage output.
And analysis of the WWS chart afterwards shows, on our best attempt, 5 DPS'ers close to eachother at the top. And then a massive gap followed by a grouping of 8 people who could possibly be mistaken for tanks if this report were the only thing you observed.
/doh
Not gonna happen.
Rage Winterchill tonight. Should be fun to see, even if an exercise in futility, given numbers like that.
Showing posts with label Magtheridon's Lair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Magtheridon's Lair. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
I Can Haz Wheaties
I had a bowl of Wheaties this morning, 'cuz its the breakfast of Champions of the Na'aru.
What a hell of a night.
In case you don't want to be crit'ed by my wall of text, here's a taste of what's to come:
Start off with one of our most dependable DPS'ers giving some drama about not wanting to leave the guild, but wanting to run in TK with some other people instead of raiding with us wednesday night.
Not so much.
On an off-raid night, no problem, we may or may not even get to TK before the expansion. But on a raid night? And telling, not asking, but telling me that you're doing this, 45 minutes before our scheduled raid? Go ahead and join your fancy TK friends or guild or whatnot. Then try some baloney like that with them. See how long you last. He ended up not raiding with either group wednesday night.
This kind of stuff is unfortunate, because he really is a big part of the team, and brings tons of flavor to the Guild's culture. Normally very dependable, but sometimes the lure of more advanced content clouds things.
Fresh off of the shenanigans, I start forming up the 25-person raid.
The sun was shining and we actually had 4 Shammies with us. Actually gave me some issue trying to figure out how to optimize their positioning in the raid groups, since I know very little beyond the surface of what a Shaman brings to their party, I've had so few of them to work with. So I did what any good leader should do, Imade someone else make the decision delegated. I turned to the most veteran Shaman and asked him to suggest which party to put each Shaman in, and provide me a reason for his suggestions. Additionally, he should tell each Shaman what totems they should drop to make his suggestions work.
Was great. He came up with some solid ideas for each player, shared reasons for the decisions, and clear communication to each individual Shaman on what totems they need to drop. Feels great when you can delegate responsibility to people and get strong results. Makes the entire raid work better.
Ultimately, we formed up the raid and got moving 20 minutes after scheduled start time. In cosmic irony, we spent the last 12 minutes of those 20 looking for 1 more DPS only. This, on the same night we have an issue with that one raider earlier.
But, we got the team ready to rock.
Yours truly was the culprit. One time, I stood too close to my cube too early, a Conflagration dropped on me and my cube, killed me, then my backup came to click and she got burned also.
Ouch. And Uggy.
Sloppy start.
Next attempt, I was clicking again, and just taking massive amounts of damage. I'm not sure what was hitting me, because I was definitely avoiding any damaging effects I could notice, but at the moment the Main Tank went down (very prematurely), I was less than 1000 health, and I had just bandaged, health stoned, and health potted, so something is very very wrong. And it wasnt Blast Nova, no ticks of that got off during this attempt.
Did a few more tries.
Wiped a few more times. Nobody was saying anything negative, but you could hear the energy level going down in their voices.
We got him down to 14% before one of the wipes. These are pretty long fights. Wiping after 11 minutes of battle is a little deflating.
This is our third night of wiping on Magtheridon this week.
But I give huge credit to the team, because despite the dropping energy level, the tone was still positive.
I had to do something to change the momentum.
Everybody go, take 5 minutes, do bio stuff, get drinks, punch walls, but please don't break your knuckles, we need your fingers for the next hour or so.
I did a few yoga moves, some of the simpler ones that my still-recovering-from-surgery hand allows me to do.
Pretended to smash my bar stool on the floor.
Got my game face back on.
Oh, and this time, lets have Amava NOT be a clicker. She's clearly mentally challenged in this capacity.
Not being a clicker, I was free to do full DPS. This is just plain old FUN. Clicking is stressful, and leaves me out of range for Mend Pet for lots of the fight. Standing basically in one spot and pew pew pew'ing is nice.
But, we actually lose the primary and secondary clicker for one of the cubes, so I had to Aspect of the Cheetah and run all the way across the battlefield, avoiding frontal cone cleave, and sub'ed in. We wiped anyways.
At this point, its clear to me that our DPS is sufficient. We are burning down 4.75 Channelers before Magtheridon activates, assuming Amava's first or second FD doesnt get resisted. Its strange, how much of a huge difference a one magical resist on a single player can actually impact the raid. One attempt, my first two FD's resisted, and we only got 3 Channelers down before Maggy. On another attempt, my first FD resisted, and we got 3.75 Channelers down. On attempts where my FD works properly in the first 2 minutes of the encounter, we get between 4.5 and 4.75 channelers down.
But I digress.
Knowing that DPS across the whole raid is sufficient, I decide that survivability is lacking.
I asked our Shadow Priest to spec Holy, and we'd try it with 8 healers.
Seconds before the pull, our new healer gives me a gentle nudge "Amava, you did put a replacement on my cube clicking assignment, didnt you?"
Oops. Thx for the reminder, glad somebody is paying attention.
So I return to official clicking duty.
Everything came together perfectly.
Good progress through the Channelers, no resists on Amava's FD, good handling of the Abyssals, good healing of the tanks/raid/clickers.
Was one silly Battle Rez that got me a tad irked with my Druid.
We had 5 tanks. Once Channelers were down and Abyssals are de-spawned, one tank was Main Tanking, a second tank was backing him up incase MT died, two of the tanks were clickers, and the fifth tank was simply performing minor DPS on Magtheridon.
That tank died.
Without any instruction, one of the Druids announced that a BRez was being sent out.
I tried to call out "He's an off-tank with no tanking job right now, save it", but it was too late, Druid called on voice AFTER the cast was already committed.
Not happy, but W/E, lets keep the fight moving.
Properly handled the transition past 30%, including a small pause in DPS at the 33% mark to allow a Blast Nova interrupt to occur, and to allow the Healers and self-bandagers to ensure all raid members were topped off before the ceiling collapsed.
And then smooth sailing from there.
Dead boss.
He drops lots of goodies.
A bunch of T4 tokens, a 20 slot bag, some plate belt, and a Magtheridon's Head.
Nobody had any clue what the hell this thing was for.
I checked WoW Head.
Ah, turn it in for a ring.
Ok, everybody who didn't get something yet, /roll
Lots of posing for screen shots, including lots of Olympic Tabards and Companion Pets.
Nothing eventful here, just a little line of text telling me that the Na'aru are big fans of my work.
Then some fiddling with the Interface options so we could all look at our own names and titles.
Mostly just basking in some ego-stroking glory.
Then we all flew from Shatt over to Honor Hold to let the guy who won the head turn the quest in.
And we all took great joy in posing on our flying mounts around the giant head on a pole.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a screenie of it, but supposedly somebody's gonna post one up on the guild website, because it was nice.
We put all the Swift Purple Gryphons together in front, then all the dark colored Netherdrakes up above, and all the light colored Netherdrakes around the edges.
We're dorks, but it was lots of fun.
Oh, wait, i already covered the rejoicing up above. kek.
I'm hugely thankful at the contribution of each and every raid member. We all stuck together through three nights of wiping on this guy, and only hit pay dirt at the very end of the third long night.
For a casual guild, trying to maintain that level of involvement while facing difficulty is a challenge. The team worked hard, stayed positive, adjusted to mistakes and new strategies, provided feedback, and also joked around a bunch. I'm really proud of my teammates, even the damn Rogue who topped me on the damage meter for the progression kill. I told him that he's being put on clicking duty next time :-) Its good to be the RL.
Seems that a little progress has infused some fighting spirit back into the Guild and our Officer corps. Everybody's gung-ho to get back at some Gruul and more Maggy, with sights set on getting these two into a 1-night affair.
And then the big moment, two weeks out, we're gonna get started in T5 country with Serpent Shrine Cavern.
How long till November?
What a hell of a night.
In case you don't want to be crit'ed by my wall of text, here's a taste of what's to come:
- Start the night with a lil helping of drama
- Delegate decision for Shammy group positioning and get great response
- Rocky start with some sloppy clicking
- Wipe a bunch of times
- Take a timeout to allow everybody to regain some focus
- Wipe again
- Respec from Shadow to Holy
- Kill Magtheridon
- Get confused about what his head is for, but WoWHead to the rescue
- Visit to A'dal and get Champion of the Na'aru title
- Visit to Honor Hold and take screenshots around giant head on a pole
- Much Rejoicing
- Amava informs DM-topping Rogue that next time, he's on clicking duty, lol
Start the night with a lil helping of drama
Start off with one of our most dependable DPS'ers giving some drama about not wanting to leave the guild, but wanting to run in TK with some other people instead of raiding with us wednesday night.
Not so much.
On an off-raid night, no problem, we may or may not even get to TK before the expansion. But on a raid night? And telling, not asking, but telling me that you're doing this, 45 minutes before our scheduled raid? Go ahead and join your fancy TK friends or guild or whatnot. Then try some baloney like that with them. See how long you last. He ended up not raiding with either group wednesday night.
This kind of stuff is unfortunate, because he really is a big part of the team, and brings tons of flavor to the Guild's culture. Normally very dependable, but sometimes the lure of more advanced content clouds things.
Delegate decision for Shammy group positioning and get great response
Fresh off of the shenanigans, I start forming up the 25-person raid.
The sun was shining and we actually had 4 Shammies with us. Actually gave me some issue trying to figure out how to optimize their positioning in the raid groups, since I know very little beyond the surface of what a Shaman brings to their party, I've had so few of them to work with. So I did what any good leader should do, I
Was great. He came up with some solid ideas for each player, shared reasons for the decisions, and clear communication to each individual Shaman on what totems they need to drop. Feels great when you can delegate responsibility to people and get strong results. Makes the entire raid work better.
Ultimately, we formed up the raid and got moving 20 minutes after scheduled start time. In cosmic irony, we spent the last 12 minutes of those 20 looking for 1 more DPS only. This, on the same night we have an issue with that one raider earlier.
But, we got the team ready to rock.
Rocky start with some sloppy clicking
Yours truly was the culprit. One time, I stood too close to my cube too early, a Conflagration dropped on me and my cube, killed me, then my backup came to click and she got burned also.
Ouch. And Uggy.
Sloppy start.
Next attempt, I was clicking again, and just taking massive amounts of damage. I'm not sure what was hitting me, because I was definitely avoiding any damaging effects I could notice, but at the moment the Main Tank went down (very prematurely), I was less than 1000 health, and I had just bandaged, health stoned, and health potted, so something is very very wrong. And it wasnt Blast Nova, no ticks of that got off during this attempt.
Wipe a bunch of times
Did a few more tries.
Wiped a few more times. Nobody was saying anything negative, but you could hear the energy level going down in their voices.
We got him down to 14% before one of the wipes. These are pretty long fights. Wiping after 11 minutes of battle is a little deflating.
This is our third night of wiping on Magtheridon this week.
But I give huge credit to the team, because despite the dropping energy level, the tone was still positive.
I had to do something to change the momentum.
Take a timeout to allow everybody to regain some focus
Everybody go, take 5 minutes, do bio stuff, get drinks, punch walls, but please don't break your knuckles, we need your fingers for the next hour or so.
I did a few yoga moves, some of the simpler ones that my still-recovering-from-surgery hand allows me to do.
Pretended to smash my bar stool on the floor.
Got my game face back on.
Oh, and this time, lets have Amava NOT be a clicker. She's clearly mentally challenged in this capacity.
Wipe again
Not being a clicker, I was free to do full DPS. This is just plain old FUN. Clicking is stressful, and leaves me out of range for Mend Pet for lots of the fight. Standing basically in one spot and pew pew pew'ing is nice.
But, we actually lose the primary and secondary clicker for one of the cubes, so I had to Aspect of the Cheetah and run all the way across the battlefield, avoiding frontal cone cleave, and sub'ed in. We wiped anyways.
At this point, its clear to me that our DPS is sufficient. We are burning down 4.75 Channelers before Magtheridon activates, assuming Amava's first or second FD doesnt get resisted. Its strange, how much of a huge difference a one magical resist on a single player can actually impact the raid. One attempt, my first two FD's resisted, and we only got 3 Channelers down before Maggy. On another attempt, my first FD resisted, and we got 3.75 Channelers down. On attempts where my FD works properly in the first 2 minutes of the encounter, we get between 4.5 and 4.75 channelers down.
But I digress.
Respec from Shadow to Holy
Knowing that DPS across the whole raid is sufficient, I decide that survivability is lacking.
I asked our Shadow Priest to spec Holy, and we'd try it with 8 healers.
Seconds before the pull, our new healer gives me a gentle nudge "Amava, you did put a replacement on my cube clicking assignment, didnt you?"
Oops. Thx for the reminder, glad somebody is paying attention.
So I return to official clicking duty.
Kill Magtheridon
Everything came together perfectly.
Good progress through the Channelers, no resists on Amava's FD, good handling of the Abyssals, good healing of the tanks/raid/clickers.
Was one silly Battle Rez that got me a tad irked with my Druid.
We had 5 tanks. Once Channelers were down and Abyssals are de-spawned, one tank was Main Tanking, a second tank was backing him up incase MT died, two of the tanks were clickers, and the fifth tank was simply performing minor DPS on Magtheridon.
That tank died.
Without any instruction, one of the Druids announced that a BRez was being sent out.
I tried to call out "He's an off-tank with no tanking job right now, save it", but it was too late, Druid called on voice AFTER the cast was already committed.
Not happy, but W/E, lets keep the fight moving.
Properly handled the transition past 30%, including a small pause in DPS at the 33% mark to allow a Blast Nova interrupt to occur, and to allow the Healers and self-bandagers to ensure all raid members were topped off before the ceiling collapsed.
And then smooth sailing from there.
Dead boss.
Get confused about what his head is for, but WoWHead to the rescue
He drops lots of goodies.
A bunch of T4 tokens, a 20 slot bag, some plate belt, and a Magtheridon's Head.
Nobody had any clue what the hell this thing was for.
I checked WoW Head.
Ah, turn it in for a ring.
Ok, everybody who didn't get something yet, /roll
Lots of posing for screen shots, including lots of Olympic Tabards and Companion Pets.
Visit to A'dal and get Champion of the Na'aru title
Nothing eventful here, just a little line of text telling me that the Na'aru are big fans of my work.
Then some fiddling with the Interface options so we could all look at our own names and titles.
Mostly just basking in some ego-stroking glory.
Visit to Honor Hold and take screenshots around giant head on a pole
Then we all flew from Shatt over to Honor Hold to let the guy who won the head turn the quest in.
And we all took great joy in posing on our flying mounts around the giant head on a pole.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a screenie of it, but supposedly somebody's gonna post one up on the guild website, because it was nice.
We put all the Swift Purple Gryphons together in front, then all the dark colored Netherdrakes up above, and all the light colored Netherdrakes around the edges.
We're dorks, but it was lots of fun.
Much Rejoicing
Oh, wait, i already covered the rejoicing up above. kek.
I'm hugely thankful at the contribution of each and every raid member. We all stuck together through three nights of wiping on this guy, and only hit pay dirt at the very end of the third long night.
For a casual guild, trying to maintain that level of involvement while facing difficulty is a challenge. The team worked hard, stayed positive, adjusted to mistakes and new strategies, provided feedback, and also joked around a bunch. I'm really proud of my teammates, even the damn Rogue who topped me on the damage meter for the progression kill. I told him that he's being put on clicking duty next time :-) Its good to be the RL.
Seems that a little progress has infused some fighting spirit back into the Guild and our Officer corps. Everybody's gung-ho to get back at some Gruul and more Maggy, with sights set on getting these two into a 1-night affair.
And then the big moment, two weeks out, we're gonna get started in T5 country with Serpent Shrine Cavern.
How long till November?
Making progress on Magtheridon
In a guild-first, we formed up a 25-person raid two nights in a row. You probably dont think thats much of a milestone, but for us, in the middle of summer, struggling with pre-expansion blues, its big.
And we also made more progress on the big guy. Not the kind of progress I'd really like, but we did get him down to 21% in our best attempt.
It was a blast though. Really feels like a crazy fight. I can only imagine what it was like before the semi-recent nerf, but ho hwell. Nerfed or not, he is our big obstacle right now.
One important difference about this night over previous nights was the choice of the clickers. And more importantly, the choice of the click leader. We made sure that it was all in-guild clickers who we trust (both skills and latency) and one out-of-guild clicker who has done the job several times before and was confident. For click leader, the big change was to have someone besides the Raid Leader perform the job. In previous night, I served as both RL and Click Lead, and it was just too much to handle. Before the raid, I got the officers together and asked them to nominate a person, who wasn't me, for the job.
The click leader was almost exclusively concerned with watching Maggy's cast bar. The moment the boss de-selected the tank, it was time to call out for clicking. As soon as the interrupt was successful, he called for the clicking to end. He was spot-on with his timing and communication.
I was one of the clickers. It was reasonably straightforward, although it was some what stressful when Magtheridon's bouncy move would get you out of position. Also gimped me by about 200-300 DPS, so looking forward, may want to pick someone else for the benefit of the raid. Part of that gimp was due to not really getting appropriate attention from any healers, so I was bandaging pretty much every time the cooldown was up.
We did figure it out though and were reliably interrupting most Blast Novas through the night.
We did much more tweaking of the small things. Maybe some of these tips will help any new guilds coming across Maggy.
Short on tanks, we needed to free some people up to help contain the Abyssals. So we put one tank on the first Channeler, and a second tank on the next two Channelers. Previously, we had our Main Tank handle the first two Channelers. The reason for this switch was to free up that first tank more quickly so she could handle Abyssals. And we had proven to ourselves that we very reliably had those first 3 (and 4th and nearly 5th) Channelers down before Magtheridon became active. This helped tons.
Once that first mob was down, we all moved over to the Main Tank who was handling 2 Channelers. We were DPS'ing the X, and he was also tanking the blue square. In early attempts, square was healing X with Dark Mending, so I adjusted and had a Rogue and a Mage go directly to the blue square and interrupt everything they could, and not participate in DPS on the X. Worked like a champ, Dark Mending pretty much never got through.
Ultimately, it was the Officer's night to mess things up.
In one attempt, our Tanking Officer started the pull when he was on 3 of his countdown from 5...0. Wipe.
In another attempt, our Healing Officer had a momentary brainfart and forgot to heal, resulting in MT death shortly after Maggy activated. Wipe.
In another attempt, our Guild Master and Lead Clicker forgot to press his push-to-talk button when calling out the signal for the clickers to begin clicking. Wipe.
In my personal favorite (read: least fav), our Raid Leader got nailed by some effect that pinned him in place, about a millimeter out of range of being able to click his cube. Wipe. With Maggy at 21% and the raid going really strong at that point.
I was really upset that I messed that one up. We really had good momentum, carefully managed the transition past 30% and the roof collapse, and nearly the whole raid was still alive, in good health, and enough mana to bring Magtheridon to his knees. If I had only positioned myself directly behind the cube, rather than behind-and-to-the-left of the cube, I'm confident it would have been a boss kill.
After that attempt, we had two failed attempts that never really got off the ground. I think everyone was getting tired and losing focus, so I called it a night.
On another note, one strange thing happened that has me, wearing my RL hat, puzzled. Early on in the 21% fight, a solid DPS player died. Unclear of if it was due to pulling aggro on a Channeler, or if he got nailed by 3 shadow bolt thingies from 3 different Channelers simultaneously. Irrelevant. He was dead very early on. Our only Druid calls out on voice "Amava, you want me to battle rez [dead guy]?" "No"
I needed to save the battle rez for later in the fight, in case one of our two Maggy-capable tanks went down, or for a healer.
Short while later, while the fight was still going on, [dead guy] disconnected. Could have been a hardware/network issue, but I find the timing suspicious. He's otherwise a great member of the team, has traditionally never been involved with drama or spiteful behavior, but this one will require some attention, because I won't tolerate that.
In the end, the night really built our spirits up. We showed that we know and have exactly what it takes to kill Magtheridon, and had the whole team stretch and adjust and accept a variety of different roles and small performance tweaks along the way.
I'm pretty stoked and can't wait to get back in there. Hopefully wednesday will be the night!!!
And we also made more progress on the big guy. Not the kind of progress I'd really like, but we did get him down to 21% in our best attempt.
It was a blast though. Really feels like a crazy fight. I can only imagine what it was like before the semi-recent nerf, but ho hwell. Nerfed or not, he is our big obstacle right now.
One important difference about this night over previous nights was the choice of the clickers. And more importantly, the choice of the click leader. We made sure that it was all in-guild clickers who we trust (both skills and latency) and one out-of-guild clicker who has done the job several times before and was confident. For click leader, the big change was to have someone besides the Raid Leader perform the job. In previous night, I served as both RL and Click Lead, and it was just too much to handle. Before the raid, I got the officers together and asked them to nominate a person, who wasn't me, for the job.
The click leader was almost exclusively concerned with watching Maggy's cast bar. The moment the boss de-selected the tank, it was time to call out for clicking. As soon as the interrupt was successful, he called for the clicking to end. He was spot-on with his timing and communication.
I was one of the clickers. It was reasonably straightforward, although it was some what stressful when Magtheridon's bouncy move would get you out of position. Also gimped me by about 200-300 DPS, so looking forward, may want to pick someone else for the benefit of the raid. Part of that gimp was due to not really getting appropriate attention from any healers, so I was bandaging pretty much every time the cooldown was up.
We did figure it out though and were reliably interrupting most Blast Novas through the night.
We did much more tweaking of the small things. Maybe some of these tips will help any new guilds coming across Maggy.
Short on tanks, we needed to free some people up to help contain the Abyssals. So we put one tank on the first Channeler, and a second tank on the next two Channelers. Previously, we had our Main Tank handle the first two Channelers. The reason for this switch was to free up that first tank more quickly so she could handle Abyssals. And we had proven to ourselves that we very reliably had those first 3 (and 4th and nearly 5th) Channelers down before Magtheridon became active. This helped tons.
Once that first mob was down, we all moved over to the Main Tank who was handling 2 Channelers. We were DPS'ing the X, and he was also tanking the blue square. In early attempts, square was healing X with Dark Mending, so I adjusted and had a Rogue and a Mage go directly to the blue square and interrupt everything they could, and not participate in DPS on the X. Worked like a champ, Dark Mending pretty much never got through.
Ultimately, it was the Officer's night to mess things up.
In one attempt, our Tanking Officer started the pull when he was on 3 of his countdown from 5...0. Wipe.
In another attempt, our Healing Officer had a momentary brainfart and forgot to heal, resulting in MT death shortly after Maggy activated. Wipe.
In another attempt, our Guild Master and Lead Clicker forgot to press his push-to-talk button when calling out the signal for the clickers to begin clicking. Wipe.
In my personal favorite (read: least fav), our Raid Leader got nailed by some effect that pinned him in place, about a millimeter out of range of being able to click his cube. Wipe. With Maggy at 21% and the raid going really strong at that point.
I was really upset that I messed that one up. We really had good momentum, carefully managed the transition past 30% and the roof collapse, and nearly the whole raid was still alive, in good health, and enough mana to bring Magtheridon to his knees. If I had only positioned myself directly behind the cube, rather than behind-and-to-the-left of the cube, I'm confident it would have been a boss kill.
After that attempt, we had two failed attempts that never really got off the ground. I think everyone was getting tired and losing focus, so I called it a night.
On another note, one strange thing happened that has me, wearing my RL hat, puzzled. Early on in the 21% fight, a solid DPS player died. Unclear of if it was due to pulling aggro on a Channeler, or if he got nailed by 3 shadow bolt thingies from 3 different Channelers simultaneously. Irrelevant. He was dead very early on. Our only Druid calls out on voice "Amava, you want me to battle rez [dead guy]?" "No"
I needed to save the battle rez for later in the fight, in case one of our two Maggy-capable tanks went down, or for a healer.
Short while later, while the fight was still going on, [dead guy] disconnected. Could have been a hardware/network issue, but I find the timing suspicious. He's otherwise a great member of the team, has traditionally never been involved with drama or spiteful behavior, but this one will require some attention, because I won't tolerate that.
In the end, the night really built our spirits up. We showed that we know and have exactly what it takes to kill Magtheridon, and had the whole team stretch and adjust and accept a variety of different roles and small performance tweaks along the way.
I'm pretty stoked and can't wait to get back in there. Hopefully wednesday will be the night!!!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Clicking in...3...2...1...Click
Well, actually just in time to go buy a new dog leash, and then the raid.
See, the dog took umbrage to the fact that during one of the 30 minute sunny periods he was left tied to a tree while we went fishing. He told me what he thinks of that, and chewed through his leash, only to run around terrorizing the surrounding camp sites until we were able to wrangle him in. Thanks, pup, like we're not having enough fun already on this trip. Only to be trumped later when, amidst a giant thunderous downpour, the two dogs decide to start playing rough and accidentally tear down the awning/tent that we were all taking shelter under. Once again, thx pup.
So I make it home and get ready to raid.
Not looking good with only 13 signups and only 12 logged in an hour before start time.
Well, ok, I'd actually rather watch some Olympics than do a raid tonight anyways because
Raid time gets closer, 20 people from the Guild on, some friends available, lets go see what we think of Magtheridon.
First pull was 30 minutes later than scheduled start time which was annoying, but oh well.
If anybody has been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that back in January, when we were progressed maybe 2 bosses into Karazhan with one team of 10 people only, we decided to raid Magtheridon as a team building exercise. Ended up being a team crushing exercise, but oh well. Water under the bridge, however we did clear all the trash which is actually something to be pretty proud of given the fact that most people were in greenies, not even bluies at that point, and very few had ANY raiding experience at all.
So, we return to seek revenge.
Such fun to waltz through the trash like it was nothing. All the players who were present in January had a good laugh at that.
Took a while to explain the fight.
A few people had seen the fight before, but nobody had ever done the job of cube clicker.
So, I chose three of the tanks who won't need to be tanking, and two very responsible Mages as clickers.
We all knew the general idea of clicking to interrupt Blast Nova, but nobody had an idea of the precise timing of when to do the click.
So we started up, cleared the Channelers easily. On our best attempt, we had 4 channelers down and were started on the 5th when Maggy activated, so our DPS was on the money.
Cube clicking.
Uggy uggy uggy.
We successfully interrupted Blast Nova twice during 5 attempts.
Just couldn't get it nailed.
At first it was probably due to confusion about the Deadly Boss Mods timers. Not really sure when to do it.
As the night went on, I think I figured out that there was a long DBM timer for Blast Nova Cooldown, followed by an 11 second timer for Casting Blast Nova.
I started my countdown of "Clicking in...3...2...1...click" as soon as that 11-second timer started.
Doing it that way, we interrupted twice, but all other times, failed and wiped.
I'm thinking it was down to execution, rather than a badly timed countdown, because I started looking for the purple beams to show up and wasn't seeing all 5, so somebody was messing up.
Best attempt was Maggy to 75% after 3 Blast Novas (first two successfully interrupted), so I think we have all the raid-wide stats and ability, just need to master the clickery.
Gonna try again Monday night, so hopefully we'll get another 25 together and really try this out.
Probably will try with a different set of Clickers. Not the ideal players, because I'd ultimately want these folks to be all-out DPS'ing, but until we figure out how to properly interrupt Blast Nova, we may have to try something drastic.
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