Eeyan goes on a Raid!

He got to hit both Magtheridon - thus completing his Trial of the Naaru - and Gruul. He still hasn't done the quests to get the other part of the Champion title.

It was at the last minute I realized, sheesh, I have never been in more than a 10-man with Eeyan. I did the best I could with my UI last-minute. After all his layout requirements are much, much different. I think it's still too much, he doesn't need to see party or party targets.

Mag's head

Last night was Gruul + Mag for Darkfall. Viljo was the mage tank (/flex) and we managed to down Maulgar and Gruul on our first tries. Of course this meant that once we got to Magtheridon we messed up the first time. It was due to someone not being sure if they were a cube clicker and not getting an affirmative in time to click. Anyway Mag died our second try, once we got the clicking sorted out.

Vilijo already had the wand and t4 chest from Mag. So Viljo isn't all that interested in the loot. Except for Mag's head. I decided that I wanted the head. The ring you get as quest reward isn't all that great. But it would be a slightly better boss dps ring than what Viljo had. And even more importantly it would be a quest that Viljo finished.

So Viljo bid all his dkp. I figured I might as well. If I didn't bid everything and someone else got the head, I'd be annoyed that I missed out. And if I did bid everything and someone else got the head, then that someone else would deplete their dkp.

Viljo is now the proud weared of the Band of Crimson Fury.

Leo Down

Darkfall finally downed Leotheras the Blind. For weeks we haven't been able to get him below 20%, including the first attempt tonight. Then, second attempt, he was pwned. Kuan died at 1% having gotten whirlwinded twice. I was mad and started to yell, then Leo fell.

Gloves for each class dropped. I didn't bother going for them as I knew at least one shaman and one rogue who wanted them badly. They tied on bids, and the rogue rolled a 2. Now the shaman feels guilty, but does, after all, have spiffy new gloves.

I figure, there's always next week. The rogue can get them then. Or, I'll take a shot at them.

Meanwhile, last night we downed Maulgar, Gruul, Magtheridon. The latter two were oneshots. Maulgar, though, just can't get him right, and it took 3 tries. Maulgar however is officially considered On Farm so Kuan got his T4 shoulders without needing to bid. Becuase who knows when they will bother fixing Void Reaver.

Magtheridon

Darkfall raided Gruul and Magtheridon this evening. Gruul went a lot better than Mag. As in despite wipes on both Maulgar and Gruul we took them down, but despite a couple of hours of work on Mag he was still alive by the time we had to call it.

We did get Mag down to 25% on one of our attempts, and I'm sure that the next time we try him he shall die. But we had to keep re-explaining the fight to new people who had to swap in for other people who had to leave to go to sleep.

Weapons and luck

Today, and for a while now, I was feeling pretty crappy. So crappy that I wasn't going to log in to WoW last night. However, DraNgNon convinced me that I should, mostly because we thought that the regular mage tank wouldn't be there and Viljo would be needed for Maulgar.

So we logged in and killed Maulgar after a couple of wipes and then proceeded to one-shot Gruul as is our wont. We have a hard time with the coordination for Maulgar, but we've turned Gruul into a dps fight because everyone is geared.

Gruul dropped the Bloodmaw Magus-Blade!!! And Viljo was at the top of the dkp. So now Viljo is the proud owner of the lovely magus-blade. /swoon And due to the kindness of guildies and generosity of DraNgNon Viljo has the Sunfire enchant. +50 to fire and arcane, woot. I even was able to get the void crystals for that from the guild bank, which makes sense, because we've got at least 200 of them in there.

Then Kuan and Telt went to Kara to finish up last Tuesday's run. We skipped Illhoof due to a lack of aoe and a plethora of melee dps. But we one shot all the other bosses we tried. Which, given Telt's lack of health, quite frankly shocked me that we one-shotted Aran. Anyway, the Nathrezim Mindblade dropped from Prince. The only other caster dps there already had it so Kuan got it!

Yay for shiny new weapons! Yay! We shall surely kill Lurker on Wednesday night!

Gruul and Ogri'la

Last night Darkfall went to Gruul's Lair for our usual Sunday night raid. We downed both Maulgar and Gruul again, but it was a little bit strange. We were missing two of our best geared main tanks and on the Maulgar pull it showed. The new tanks didn't know where to pull to or how to pull only their mobs. So it took us a couple of wipes to get it down. Then we went on to Gruul and one-shot him. It amuses me that Darkfall seems to follow this same pattern every week. We struggle with the coordination of Maulgar and then one-shot Gruul. Admittedly this week it was a bit less smooth to down Gruul. Because we were missing our best geared main tanks the last 5% was done with after the tanks were dead.

After everyone was rezzed the loot was linked. And there were Fallen Hero pants! I bid all the dkp that Viljo had. (I learned my lesson last time: no matter how much you bid, winner only pays 2nd bid +5.) So now Viljo is a proud wearer of the [Legwraps of the Aldor] and has the (slightly lame) 4-piece bonus.


Anyway after Gruul there were some half hearted attempts to finish Kara and do ZA. However Eeyan and Teltanara pulled together a guild group and unlocked the Ogri'la quests. We even had one out of group person so that the warlock-pentagram guy was a bit easier. But now Eeyan and Telt have access to the gold mine that is Ogri'la! Possibly we shall pool their gold soon and Eeyan will get an epic mount first. He is the gatherer after all. And there are few things quite so frustrating as making your way to a mining or herbalism node and seeing a fruity night-elf already taking it.

Annoyance

I have a theory. My theory is about annoying people and how wherever you go, whatever you do, there will always be someone annoying. Ok, yes, there are certain situations and groups of people, carefully chosen, who won't annoy someone in the group. However, by and large, there will be someone annoying in any group of people.

This annoying person may actually be an annoying butt muncher who does things that piss everyone else off. They may also be just the person in the group you are least compatible with. The person that your brain seizes on as annoying. Mostly though, there is some annoying person who you can't get away from because they are part of your circle of friends or, in this specific case, part of your guild. This particular annoying person was on ignore from many people, several of them officers who refused to post raid signups because they didn't want him in the raid.

Last night the annoying person in Darkfall pissed off the raid leader. The short version of the pissing off is that someone came to the raid flagged, and so half the group ended up with PvP disease. In order for group heals and buffs to work we all had to flag. Now we're inside of Gruul's Lair so this really isn't a problem. But just before we are about to engage Gruul himself this very annoying person refuses to flag. Raid Leader says flag or leave raid. Annoying person hearths and logs off. We pull in another dps and kill Gruul.

(Side note: I was outbid on the Bloodmaw Magus Blade. Dammit!)

Anyway after the raid is over and we're all dispersed, annoying person logs on and /gquits his characters. The Raid Leader gave a little talk about working as a team and no one was really sad to see him go.

The initial people who had been (accidentally) flagged had already logged off. So Kuan and Viljo sent them Delicious Chocolate Cakes to celebrate.

I am the Mage Tank /flex

On Sunday we had our first official raid in about 3 weeks. It was a guild run of Gruul. Darkfall has done a bunch of recruiting and had more than enough 70s online to fill it all out. So it was our very first all guild Gruul run.

However, this was not the exciting part to me. The exciting part to me was that our regular mage tank was in the air flying home. So about an hour and a half before the raid started I got a whisper asking me if I could do the mage tank thing. I started looking at my stamina gear, and ended up spending the next hour frantically running to and from the bank and AH trying stuff on and putting stam gems, +10 stam armor patches, and +30 stam leg armor on gear. I ended up with 9423 hp unbuffed, which translated to 12k+ health raid buffed.

There was almost a snafu where the RL tried to ask one of the other mages to tank. (She had only 10k+ health fully raid buffed.) Fortunately she and I both spoke up and I got my two assigned healers.

First attempt my entirely inexperience healers didn't realize that I had to be kept topped off ALL the time. So I died the first time my stolen spellshield went away for a sec.

Second time someone else accidentally pulled and a tank died early on.

Third time I do the pull correctly and manage to time my firewards correctly to (I think) not take full damage from the fireballs. Everyone else does their job too and Lo! we kill Maulgar.

I was so nervous ahead of time and so happy that it actually worked! I spent a lot of gold getting my health up there to be able to do the mage tanking and I was just overjoyed to not let the guild (and myself) down. I gave my healers profuse thanks. :)

Anyway after Maulgar we went on to one-shot Gruul. Once again I lost the roll for my t4 pants. But since we one-shotted him I am completely sure that we won't ever be pugging people in again.

Gruul down

Gruul is dead! As of around 11 last night Darkfall killed Gruul.

We had about 5 or 6 pugged in people, but it was mostly guild. Our last attempt both tanks were dead by about 5%. But the dps and healers who were still up kept pounding on him. I swear that was the longest ever 5% of a boss. We ended the fight with only a priest and Kuanchichi still up. (Yay for shamans who can pop and know when to do so!)

Hopefully we can get him down again next week. It was such a slap-dash kill. We are getting better at the trash on the way to him, which meant this time that we were able to get in a couple of extra tries before respawn and we cleared it twice so we had more attempts. Also we one-shotted Maulgar for the second week in a row.

High King Maulgar

Yesterday evening Darkfall ran Gruul's Lair. Sadly we are still lacking people for a full guild-only run of Gruul. So it took about an hour to get the last 8-ish healers and dps we needed. However once we got people we downed Maulgar and his council on our 4th try.

There were a couple of wipes on bad pulls to start with. We definitely have enough dps for the fight, but the tricky part of this fight isn't dps like Gruul, it's the initial pull and aggro generation. Then after our 3rd wipe an annoying dumbass warlock decided that it would be faster for him to spirit rez than to hearth and get summoned back. He had already been annoying earlier but it was excruciating watching my flask and mana oil tick down.

So our 4th attempt went off well. Viljo didn't run out of mana and managed not to die. (Last time he got punted into Maulgar just as a whirlwind was starting up. Death was instantaneous.) And Maulgar dropped some nice loots. Viljo got his Pauldrons of the Aldor. Sadly Kuan didn't win the roll for his t4 shoulder token.

Gruul attempts

DraNgNon and I got back from vacation yesterday. We unpacked etc. Then it was time for the logging in to the WoW. (Yay!)

First up was Teltanara and Eeyan. Telt is now 62 and has finished more quests in EPL and the Pools of Aggonar area of Hellfire Peninsula. Eeyan mined more. :) She still isn't caught up to where his quests are. :(

Then we swapped to Kuanchichi and Viljo. We were just gonna log in and do some dailies and maybe get a group for heroic something or other. Mostly make sure we had all our mats for the Kara raid tomorrow. But as soon as I logged in the raid leader whispered me:

RL: "Can you and Kuan come to Gruul's?"
Viljo: "uh, we just got back from vacation..."
RL: "Cool I'll give you a min or two before summons"

Now that isn't exactly what was said, it's my interpretive text of it. (Imagine the text version of interpretive dance.) And as such conveys my feeling of what happened rather than the actual words.

Anyway apparently Darkfall had cleared High King Maulgar over the weekend, for the second week in a row. We aren't quite large enough to do it by ourself and we've been missing people (like Kuan and Viljo :-) ). So we're working with High Lords of the Horde. They are a bit... less organized... than us. Anyway the group was trying Gruul yesterday. Sadly we only managed to get him down to 23% on our best shot, but one of the other mages said they could only get him to 60% the week before that. So I'm thinking that the next time the group tries it we should do it. Especially if there are enough gear upgrades between now and then.

Anyway by the time we had finished being slaughtered by gruul Viljo was down 12g for repairs and Kuan was down 28g. Mail is that much more expensive and popping gives you 2 deaths for every wipe. :(

Gruul is an interesting fight. I think once we get it, it'll be all due to good placement for shatters. My group was doing pretty good by the end of our attempts. Most of the time I only died after both tanks were dead. However I think the healers were getting a lot of shatter damage, and that was probably what was killing us.