(WoW) Naxxramas
A ziggurat raised into a flying fortress by the Lich King, serving as base for his lich Kel'Thuzad in spreading the Scourge plague. It hovered above the Eastern Plaguelands for years, but moved to Dragonblight in Northrend, serving as the "beginning" raid for Wrath. And now I've finally seen some of it.
We got started about an hour late, due to work in some cases - we just didn't have everyone who signed up on-time. Real life comes first, but it'd be nice if we could work on that. We buffed up (and with three paladins, I really should get that addon working to help manage those) and headed into the arachnid quarter. Trash was fairly simple - just a few pulls of large groups that didn't survive AOE long enough to really threaten anyone. And then we were at the first boss.
Anub'rekhan
The big nerubian beatle-type. I had serious tank-vision on this fight. I know the others dealt with the adds that spawn, but I only ever saw one. Mostly, I just saw the boss and myself. I ran a little early from the first locust swarm, though I don't think that hurt anything. I managed to kite him around the room without being in the slime, and I didn't notice that getting the swarm debuff really hindered me. He went down before the third swarm, and we lost one person in the fight - I've no idea why.
Grand Widow Faerlina
A little more trash down the hall and some room-clearing, then the second boss. We decided to try for the achievement, so I pulled the adds to the side and Elly tanked the boss. In retrospect, I think we killed one of the adds too close to the boss to begin with, as I saw the Widow's Embrace message come up. I think that fouled our achievement attempt and wonder if it'd be better to focus on killing the boss first to avoid that. Otherwise, we might have had it. But we killed the adds, she frenzied, after some amount of time Elly went down and I picked the boss up to be finished off. Next time, we may want to try things slightly differently, but it was still a success.
Maexxna
Then there was the last boss of the quarter. Big and spidery. I perceived a little slowness in getting people un-webbed at the beginning, but I think our DPS got the hang of it. Someone said she pins people to both walls, but I only saw the one (left coming in). Our ret-paladin really pushed me for aggro here, I noticed, and there were a couple near-death points for me. Still, we got through it, clearing the quarter. Then we turned toward the plague wing.
One person bowed out at this point, leaving us with 9. But hey, why not try it anyway? Again, most trash was AOE'd down. A early pull was uncontrolled and almost killed a healer, but we got back together. The gargoyles here bear special mention. When their health gets down, they start casting an effect that will heal them entirely - they have to be killed before it goes off. They also apply a stacking DoT to a very wide area (30-40 yards, at least from what I saw). One was okay. The two-pulls were trickier. We got through the first pair, pulled a patrol, got to the second pair, then there was some misunderstanding. Two of the DPS were not attacking the one we wanted to kill first, so there wasn't enough damage to put it down. And they were slow to respond to directions otherwise... and they ended up dying. We essentially wiped on that pull (heh, I ended up actually running out of the instance only to die due to the DoT right outside). Second time around, we did better.
Noth
Elly tanked Noth, while I wrangled skeleton adds. There were a couple tricky spots, but I don't think any of them slipped away from me in the main phase. We didn't always get them down before the next ones popped up. In the adds-only phase, the second one was a little heavy on numbers. I'm glad we didn't see a third.
Heigan
Oh Heigan. The legendary "dance" fight. I gave the briefing on this one and... while I think everything I said was correct, you simply don't learn this one through reading text. You need visuals and/or experience. The fight isn't about DPS, healing, and tanking - all those elements are there, but they only matter if people move where they need to be. If you aren't where you need to be, you die. If you're dead, you can't fill any role.
People died. A lot.
I think it's safe to say all the videos I watched helped a lot, as I was generally the last to get caught in slime eruptions and die. Tiik did very well. Kyn did pretty good. Behind them, there were varying lengths of survival. One or two attempts, it was just Tiik and myself after a point. In fact, I had him down to about 120k health at one point, but I was alone by then and had blown my tricks. One more person had to go during this time, leaving us with eight. But the fight isn't about how many people you have in the group so much as how many survive.
I think it was about our sixth attempt (give or take, it really blurs together) when enough of us finally survived (myself, Kyn, and Velnor, I think) to pull through the end. Note that the others in the group generally lasted longer this last time, so he was more damaged as we lost people, too.
That's where we ended, extending raid lockout past a week in case we can get in there again next weekend or something. Downing Heigan is pretty big in my book. Of course, Loatheb is "next" and he's a different kind of challenge (where healing only works through 3 seconds out of 20).
There's definitely a lot going on with ten people plus opponents, and it can get confusing. You've got to focus on what you're doing without totally losing sight of what's going on around you. That's something that can take practice.
I know some people weren't feeling well. Some people had to leave early. But I am very pleased that we got in there and made a solid first attempt at raiding, and I'm very proud of the guild for it.
We got started about an hour late, due to work in some cases - we just didn't have everyone who signed up on-time. Real life comes first, but it'd be nice if we could work on that. We buffed up (and with three paladins, I really should get that addon working to help manage those) and headed into the arachnid quarter. Trash was fairly simple - just a few pulls of large groups that didn't survive AOE long enough to really threaten anyone. And then we were at the first boss.
Anub'rekhan
The big nerubian beatle-type. I had serious tank-vision on this fight. I know the others dealt with the adds that spawn, but I only ever saw one. Mostly, I just saw the boss and myself. I ran a little early from the first locust swarm, though I don't think that hurt anything. I managed to kite him around the room without being in the slime, and I didn't notice that getting the swarm debuff really hindered me. He went down before the third swarm, and we lost one person in the fight - I've no idea why.
Grand Widow Faerlina
A little more trash down the hall and some room-clearing, then the second boss. We decided to try for the achievement, so I pulled the adds to the side and Elly tanked the boss. In retrospect, I think we killed one of the adds too close to the boss to begin with, as I saw the Widow's Embrace message come up. I think that fouled our achievement attempt and wonder if it'd be better to focus on killing the boss first to avoid that. Otherwise, we might have had it. But we killed the adds, she frenzied, after some amount of time Elly went down and I picked the boss up to be finished off. Next time, we may want to try things slightly differently, but it was still a success.
Maexxna
Then there was the last boss of the quarter. Big and spidery. I perceived a little slowness in getting people un-webbed at the beginning, but I think our DPS got the hang of it. Someone said she pins people to both walls, but I only saw the one (left coming in). Our ret-paladin really pushed me for aggro here, I noticed, and there were a couple near-death points for me. Still, we got through it, clearing the quarter. Then we turned toward the plague wing.
One person bowed out at this point, leaving us with 9. But hey, why not try it anyway? Again, most trash was AOE'd down. A early pull was uncontrolled and almost killed a healer, but we got back together. The gargoyles here bear special mention. When their health gets down, they start casting an effect that will heal them entirely - they have to be killed before it goes off. They also apply a stacking DoT to a very wide area (30-40 yards, at least from what I saw). One was okay. The two-pulls were trickier. We got through the first pair, pulled a patrol, got to the second pair, then there was some misunderstanding. Two of the DPS were not attacking the one we wanted to kill first, so there wasn't enough damage to put it down. And they were slow to respond to directions otherwise... and they ended up dying. We essentially wiped on that pull (heh, I ended up actually running out of the instance only to die due to the DoT right outside). Second time around, we did better.
Noth
Elly tanked Noth, while I wrangled skeleton adds. There were a couple tricky spots, but I don't think any of them slipped away from me in the main phase. We didn't always get them down before the next ones popped up. In the adds-only phase, the second one was a little heavy on numbers. I'm glad we didn't see a third.
Heigan
Oh Heigan. The legendary "dance" fight. I gave the briefing on this one and... while I think everything I said was correct, you simply don't learn this one through reading text. You need visuals and/or experience. The fight isn't about DPS, healing, and tanking - all those elements are there, but they only matter if people move where they need to be. If you aren't where you need to be, you die. If you're dead, you can't fill any role.
People died. A lot.
I think it's safe to say all the videos I watched helped a lot, as I was generally the last to get caught in slime eruptions and die. Tiik did very well. Kyn did pretty good. Behind them, there were varying lengths of survival. One or two attempts, it was just Tiik and myself after a point. In fact, I had him down to about 120k health at one point, but I was alone by then and had blown my tricks. One more person had to go during this time, leaving us with eight. But the fight isn't about how many people you have in the group so much as how many survive.
I think it was about our sixth attempt (give or take, it really blurs together) when enough of us finally survived (myself, Kyn, and Velnor, I think) to pull through the end. Note that the others in the group generally lasted longer this last time, so he was more damaged as we lost people, too.
That's where we ended, extending raid lockout past a week in case we can get in there again next weekend or something. Downing Heigan is pretty big in my book. Of course, Loatheb is "next" and he's a different kind of challenge (where healing only works through 3 seconds out of 20).
There's definitely a lot going on with ten people plus opponents, and it can get confusing. You've got to focus on what you're doing without totally losing sight of what's going on around you. That's something that can take practice.
I know some people weren't feeling well. Some people had to leave early. But I am very pleased that we got in there and made a solid first attempt at raiding, and I'm very proud of the guild for it.
Text??? How come y'all weren't using Vent? >.< Sorry that I missed it. Glad you made it as far as you did... how long did that take you? In my experience on the 'achievement' method of Faerlina, we've burned down the adds first ASAP then moved to the boss. The reason for this is so the 2nd healer can get on the main tank for the frenzy. It's just not feasible to one-healer through that. The standard method is not that difficult, though I would reverse the tanks from what you had, and put Elly on the adds and you on the boss. The adds get marked with Skull, X, Square, Circle (kill order). About 5 seconds before the frenzy the MT pulls the boss towards the add to be killed and the dps switches to that add. Obviously, this is easier with Vent... you didn't use it why, again? I mean, not to be too pissy but this (raids) is exactly the type of reason why I'm springing for it?
ReplyDeleteSadly, not everyone was on Vent (and Kyn, while on, was not understandable for static). We could have (and maybe should have) used it more than we did, but pre-fight explanations need to get to everyone. :/ I suppose that order makes sense, but the only reason I can think of for us failing the achievement was killing one of the adds before getting them far enough away. I think we had them dead by the time she actually did frenzy.
ReplyDeleteTrust me. We used it as best we could use it, which is to say, I was static-y and that made everyone sad, and only a few pips came through for movement.
ReplyDeleteAs for duration? Uhm.. think we got going at about 8 something my time and went until 10:30 or so when we were waning on Heigan?
ReplyDeleteAll right. :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome :)
ReplyDelete