Posts Tagged ‘ Ulduar ’

I’m Such A Narcissist

Raiding update!

ZOMG I KNOW RITE?!

First off, we were going strong until the 4th, then summer came and crit us hard. We did our best to muster a full 25 last week but this week, again with flagging attendance, we decided to cut our losses and assembled an ‘elite’ team to kill Yogg-Saron on 10-man.

The result? Well, first take a look at this video of our Thorim fight last night, shot by a warlock (who has a rather spiffy UI setup I noticed)

Ok, the embed didn’t work SO HERE’S THE LINK LOOK ISN’T IT SPIFFY!?!

You’ll notice in comments towards the end of the fight that Thorim was our third keeper to kill, at only two hours into our raid time. We raid for three hours.

Before this video we had done Flame Leviathan easy-mode in order to get through faster. Then we’d turned around and did XT’s hard-mode (a guild first). We knocked out ‘With Open Arms’ on Kologarn and cringed our way through the Auriaya fight (does anybody like this fight? We don’t).

Then we took out Hodir and were pleasantly close to his Hard-Mode. We lost a ranged dps, who I then had to resurrect, depriving Hodir of both of our tender touches for a few crucial seconds. I’m pretty sure that the difference was enough to make up that DPS, or almost.

After Hodir we paid Freya a visit with her waves and waves of never-ending trash. In 25-man we like to keep the multi-specie groups (those big packs with trees and spirits and a dragon etc) under tight Crowd-Control. This time, however, we Naxx’d them (Gather up and AoE). Only special consideration was to make sure to point the dragon away from anybody important (squishies and the like). Our DK tank handled that and I did my best to pull what mobs I could off of him so he wasn’t getting overwhelmed (though I’m sure if he had to he could’ve single-tanked the lot of them).

After Freya (all bosses were 1-shots and our only wipe was to an unfortunate pull on Hodir trash) we continued to Thorim, above.

That video features our second Thorim attempt.

What happened the first time?

We got Siffed!

The ONLY reason it wasn’t a 1-shot was because of a small lapse in attention by two key players at the same time. A healer stood in the lightning, and I saw the 3-minute enrage warning pop up and taunted Thorim too early. With a healer down and an unexpected tank taking damage I went squish and things fell apart from there. You can hear my frustration with missing Sif on our second attempt too. (I’m the one calling right-left in the tunnel, and berating myself at the end for moving too quickly)

I think having ranged and healers cluster right behind the first boss in the tunnel so they’re that much closer to the adds in the hallway would be valuable. Oh yeah, we don’t tank the Acolytes, we just let them run about as they please. It works very well that way actually :)

*deep breath*

Ok, let’s continue.

After Thorim we went and whupped up on Mimiron. I believe he was a 1-shot as well and then… and then… with half an hour left on our raid time the way to Vezax was open to us.

He took four tries. One of the attempts ended in a 3% wipe which was, as one of our DK dpsers put it “Like a punch in the balls”. The feminine portion of the raid agreed that yes, if we had those organs we’d imagine that’s what it felt like.

But it was 10pm, time to call the raid.

We put it to a vote. /readycheck, yes for LET’S GET HIM! and no for ‘need sleep nao!’

The reply was an immediate and overwhelmingly enthusiatic LET’S GET HIM!

So we did :D

Half an hour or so past raid time Vezax dropped, a Guild first, and the way is open for us to spend our second two raid nights on Yogg-Saron.

Now why can’t we roll up our sleeves and do this on 25-man hmm?

Side Note – I’m not leading raids anymore. That shiz is hard! What was I thinking?

OH OH OH!

(no I’m not quite done yet)

I also picked up Hoperender off of Vezax, replacing Journey’s End for my DPS set. I rolled offspec on it and so did our DK (raid leading) tank. For offspec gear we call for a /roll.

I desperately wanted this polearm and when I called for the roll (and rolled a 31, *groan*) Mr DK-face passed it to me.

What a peach!

2009
07/15
CATEGORY
Instancing
10 comments

Channel Surfing

He’s dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD

DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!

/happydance

Take THAT!

Take THAT! - click for larger

Oh yeah, and Hodir too.

Apparently, there’s a timer on Thorim’s arena trash.

Allow me to illustrate: There’s a problem with Thorim right now and disconnects. We’ve been not-so-fondly calling it the DC-Roulette.

Me: Ok guys, everyone’s ready, pulling!

Collective thoughts of the raid: Who will DC this time?

We’ve developed a strategy to combat this, however. Kill the Jormunger, then the Acolyte, then the priests get to go have fun with mind controls. Once our tragically DC’d get back online and get their UIs in order (I have to /reloadui whenever I DC because my raid frames dissapear) then we kill everything and get on with the fight.

Last night was nuts.

We lost one, then the game didn’t lag him out so it took him forever to get back in. Once he GOT back in he was in dalaran. Yes, we were still playing with Thorim’s trash. So he hoofs it into Ulduar then ANOTHER disconnects. As he gets back in we loose another but when he connects back he’s at the entrance. Then one of the Mind-Control-happy priests runs his mob too far away, thus breaking the MC. What does a formerly-Mind Controlled mob do now that it’s free?

You’re damn right, it’s pissed, so it makes a beeline for the priest, a healer. Next thing I know there’s a giant spirit healer sitting in the room. We could waste a Battlerez or…

Just run back in man, let’s get this done.

So, our wayward priest back in the fold and we (finally) kill all the mobs.

Nothing happens.

What? Thorim? Heloooooo? Anyone home? We just killed all your entertainments, aren’t you mad? Doesn’t Sif have something to say about it?

Nope, apparently not.

Last night, Thorim did the Azerothian equivalent of falling asleep in front of the TV. *huff*

We’ll get you tonight buddy!

and PS – MIMIRON IS DEAAAAAAAD!

2009
06/25
CATEGORY
Instancing
2 comments

The Importance of Pacing

As a Raid Leader, part of my job is to decide what bosses we’re going to kill on any particular night. I have to draw on my personal knowledge of the encounter, estimate how much experience everyone else has, their performance, and how much time each boss and its assigned trash is going to take.

When we first started Ulduar 25 in earnest, we got about as far as Kologarn, leaving Auriaya up after a wipe or two and calling it a night. That was after easy-modeing Flame Leviathan, and going straight to XT. We skipped Razorscale, Ignis, and the Iron Council for quite a while.

Then, once we got a handle on XT, Kologarn, and Auriaya and had started working on keepers we inserted those other bosses in at the end of raids.

Then came this week.

And yesterday.

We’ve finally hit that sweet spot. Last night we dove straight through Flame Leviathan, did XT, then Kologarn, and finally Auriaya. She died at 8:15. Our raid time starts at 7, and we raid until 10. So, that was a little less than half our raid to get to the keepers.

Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t guessed in my wildest dreams that we’d be able to steamroll through the required bosses that quickly. The keepers (mostly) require a good amount of set-up (see below) before we tackle them.

Tonight's Roster, Lookit that beast!

Tonight's Roster, Lookit that beast!

plus bunny ^_^

Anyhoo, this is the set-up for all four keepers. Two we’ve killed before (Freya and Hodir), one we’re so damn close we can taste his defeat (Thorim) and another we’ve never seen on 25-man, and never beaten at all (Mimiron).

Last week I was completely floored when our guild managed to 1-shot Freya and we 2-shot Hodir. We had 6 attempts on Thorim with the last one ending in a wipe at 15% or so and the only outstanding problem was the lack of a set tank taunt order. This is now fixed, and I have every confidence we’ll see him dead tonight.

The real kicker is, we raid for three hours a night, three nights a week. It’s a relatively short raid night in a relatively short raid week. When we first started working on Ulduar I knew Yogg-Saron was a long ways away, and (after our previous failure to down Sartharion 3D before 3.2) I never thought we’d get to see Algalon.

14 bosses in 9 hours? Surely it’s not possible.

Oh, sure, there’s speed runs of all of Naxx completed in 2-3 hours, and that’s 15 bosses. But, you see, Naxx was easy. Ulduar is… well… not so much.

I wasn’t sure if we’d ever have the time and ability to blaze through these bosses and get deeper into Ulduar.

Last night, my guild showed me how very wrong I’d been.

Now, tonight we’ll kill three keepers, of this I have no doubt, and then we’ll start working on one of the most difficult fights in the entire instance, Mimiron.

I don’t think we’ll kill him tonight, and I would be surprised if we killed him tomorrow night, but if the raiders of Unemployed bring the kind of focus and skill they’ve shown thus far, I could definitely see us… what was that term the dear Panzercow used? Oh yes…

Next week, we’ll definitely manage to beat the Yoggy out of him.

2009
06/10
CATEGORY
Raid Leading
8 comments

Have Media, Will Travel!

Well, I don’t know if this will become a regular thing, but every now and again Unemployed manages to record our kills.

If you don’t like the music please don’t kill me, blame Pils on that one!

But this was our kill on Tuesday with every non-magic user experiencing heartache with their talents. Innumerable wipes and then, as soon as they announced the server would crash down around our ears, we ‘got ‘er done’. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t quick, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t do it!

ALSO -  Fred and Lola will make their appearances on Monday, but for now you can get the non-visual version direct from blizzard HERE.

2009
06/05
CATEGORY
Instancing
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It’s All In The Wrist

So last night was Tuesday. This means patch day, and the kick-off to our raid week.

This patch-day something… odd happened.

There were the normal grumblings about people getting stuck on the downloader, issues and hiccups getting in-game. Though I do have to note that I was patched and up and running in record time thanks to Mr. Tigerfeet downloading the patch for us through a mirror while I was at work (I’m really going to miss stuff like this when he finally finds a job)

But we got in, got everyone together, loaded up into our vehicles, and rolled out for a repeat performance of Heroic: Unbroken.

Simple, yea?

Then we worked our way through the XT trash. This is almost always a messy business, but there wasn’t anything that happened to raise any flags.

Then we started on XT. And we wiped.

Hmmmmmm. I couldn’t see anything (nor could the other officers) that was a glaring problems. It just looked like general sloppy play.

Ok then. Over Vent: “Ok guys, I’ll remind you just to make sure, do this this and this, don’t blow anyone up, don’t be stupid, we’ve got this guy”. Next attempt we killed him, but again, it was pretty messey.

By this point I was noticing something wrong. I DPS on the XT fight, and my numbers were LOW. So too, in fact, were most everyone else’s.

The fact that Beserk wasn’t working properly was our first clue.

It wasn’t until we got past Kologarn, and then banged our heads on Auriaya a few times that it really became apparent that something was very, very wrong. One kind guildie must have noticed something on the forums because he piped up about a talent glitch, people having problems with energy (yep), Runic Power, Rage, etc.

Yeah, yeah, that sounded familiar.

But this was our raid-time dammit, we might be under-performing, but Auriaya ain’t no thing so long as you get the pull right. We’ve got this.

No, NOW we’ve got this

Ho-kay, next time warn us when the Feral Defender drops, this time we’ve got it.

No… now…. NOW!

After multiple wipes caused by a myriad of little tiny things that normally wouldn’t cause us to bat an eye, this little thing flashed along the bottom of our screens…

Server Restart: 15 Minutes

Fifteen minutes? We’d just recovered from our last wipe, I had the cats marked up and we were pretty much ready to pull.

We can do this in 15 minutes!

And you know what?

We DID.

Finally, with the threat of the Server coming crashing down on our ears, we pulled up our britches, straightened our knuckles, put on our girrrrr faces, and showed Auriaya what for.

I swear, even disadvantaged like we were last night, We do our best when under pressure!

Afterwards, instead of attempting to tackle another Ulduar boss, we groupd up in Wintergrasp to run a 25-man VoA. Emalon, and then Archavon down no problem at all. Whatever they did during the re-start fixed our talent and energy issues juuuuuuust fine!

Meanwhile, I think being forced to perform better (or face annihilation) will actually go a good ways towards making us a stronger group. We’re <Unemployed>, and we thrive on adversity!

2009
06/03
CATEGORY
Raid Leading
8 comments
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