Wednesday, November 14, 2007

First Night of 2.3

After my hubby updated all my add-ons (thanks sweetie!), I logged in and was immediately invited to one of our Zul' Aman groups. I ran to the bank and withdrew my 114 badges, which I'd been saving up, and trotted off to G'eras to purchase my Band of the Swift Paw, which replaces my tattered Umberhowl's Collar, and Waistguard of the Great Beast to replace my Girdle of Treachery. Yippy! I'm good to go...wait, I need gems now!

I quickly run back to the bank and deposit my remaining badges and then run to the mailbox to log so I can log in my AH character. As soon as I log...Blue Screen. Crap. I patiently...ok, not so patiently, wait for the memory dump and then for my machine to reboot...thankfully, my gaming machine doesn't have a bunch of stuff to load so it reboots quickly. I log back in, mail myself some gems and then log Moo back on.

Already, they're chomping at the bit to get going...but...tiny spore bat pet...must get! /sigh I worked sooo hard...ok, not so hard...for exhausted and I want him! But, alas, my new pet will have to wait. Instead, I make sure I'm repaired and have 60 Wild Quillvine on me (better to be overstocked than run out) and accept my summons.

I run into the instance and await Yagi's entrance to the game. Yagi is our guild's jewelcrafter...we have others...but, I like Yagi and he carves all my gems...he also cooks all the fish and crawdad's I fish up as well. Anyway, I end up standing there, gems in pack, tapping my foot...WTF is Yagi?!?! Poor Yagi is stuck in download hell and by the time we're ready to go, he's still in the download screen. I quickly check my new, gemless, items and, according to my DruidTips add-on, they are better than my old items even without the gems so I put them on anyway.

As we're waiting, I see a fella and run up to talk to him (can you say ADD?) and he says some stuff in return...which I didn't even read...and then he runs to a gong and starts banging on it. Immediately, Ledde starts asking me, "What did you do?" "Ummm....nothin'." /feigns innocence Then, the next thing I know...the other guys (more ADD) are banging on the gong as well. Then I hear Swiftlight say, "Come bang on this gong! Nothing will happen, we need at least 5 to do it!" "Ok!!"

/bang
/bang
/bang

Ooops...the gates open. Baklor, our guild leader says, "You better not be doing anything I'm gonna miss." as he's out at the summoning stone with the other half of the raid. Then, two mobs run out...pfft...two mobs, we got this...I run up and nab them...then, a wave of mobs come pouring out...then another wave...then death and laughter.

So, after that little boo boo, we shape up, wait for the rest of the raid, and clear our way to the first boss, Nalorakk. We begin our first try at him, which was going smoothly until I blue screened. Rut roh. Baklor takes over tanking both aspects (he was tanking the troll aspect and I was tanking the bear aspect), but after a while, he's just taking too much damage from all the debuffs and dies. However, I was still in game...doing white damage... and still have quite a bit of threat and continued to tank for some time...unfortunately, not long enough for them to down him.

As soon as I get back in, we start the fight again and quickly succeed. Yippy! Our first Zul' Aman boss! He drops a Pally helm which Swiftlight got as well as one badge for each of us. Also, in the course of clearing trash, we got a couple of the Amani Hex Sticks which everyone let me and Aquenzi loot first so we could, hopefully, get a pet frog. Aquenzi and I rush down to the pond as soon as Nalorakk is dead and wave our sticks at a couple of frogs and they leave us some little charms in stead of Mojo. :( Later as the night proceed with much whining and pleeding from both Aquenzi and I, they all agreed to let she and I loot all the Amani Hex Sticks. Unfortunately, neither of us got the little toad.

We then head over to Akil'Zon and begin clearing the patrol and other trash. We're quickly spotted by the runner who runs up the ramp and alerts everything and then the gauntlet begins. The first time, we stayed at the bottom and slowly began working our way up trying to kill everything, but it becomes to overwhelming and we die. Then, on our next attempt, we try moving up the ramp quickly picking up the elite mobs as we go, but, again, it becomes too overwhelming. We then decide to take the methodical approach and kill the two elites, then the two adds from behind then the next two elites, then adds from behind and so on while ignoring the birds...again, too overwhelming. Then we decided to mount up, ride to that first guy on the stairs (tempest dood? I can't remember his name, but for the sake of this post he is now called tempest dood) and take him out and then deal with the other trash. That didn't work either. We try the methodical approach one more time. Then, we decide to just mount up, run past everything...even the boss...and die on the landing to the right of Akil'Zon and see if we can rez up. We all made it up and promptly died. Then Ledde anked to see if he could rez us...he can! Oh, wait, he's in combat...oh, out of combat...no, in combat...wait, out of combat! He gets us all rezzed up, we buff, then tip toe past the boss and make our way down to kill the tempest dood...he's not there. So, we start clearing the pairs of elites then make our way back up to kill Akil'Zon. We have several attempts at him. Our best one got him down to 52%, but then it got late and we had to call it a night.

If anyone has a strat on the gauntlet ramp, please let me know! Running up worked, but it bugged the event and might be deemed an exploit and I'd rather do it the 'legal' way.

All in all, it was a fun night. I really enjoyed getting to run and learn something new. I also absolutely LOVE insta shift!!! One second Bear and poof, instantly kitty!

Hopefully, after work, I'll be able to find some time to collect my glowcaps and buy my tiny spore bat. I also need to decide what gems I want for my new gear. I had some I had planned on, but since the wrists are the best ones in the game, I decided to get the best gem possible rather than the good one I had intended, which is just one step below, but might as well get the best now and save that gem for something else that is more of an 'interim' piece.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the event leading up to the bird boss, our two tanks would just tank the elite pairs one by one and march on up the ramp. All dps was focus firing the elites until the spawns arrive (birds from the front, 2 trolls from behind) and quickly burn them down with aoe and dps. The non elite adds will spawn indefinitely, so just keep on trucking up to the Tempest Dood or whatever he's called and down him (he's just another elite).

Anonymous said...

By the way, ^ that was Brinden from Knights of the Shadows on Kalecgos. I always look forward to reading your blog. Thanks!

Unknown said...

you didnt get the new tanking idol?!

Lypi said...

Bleh, we are getting our ass kicked by the gauntlet to the eagle boss, too. Our guild ran two groups in. One group said they didn't have a problem, it was easy (wtf?) but our group found it impossible. Our best method, bearing in mind we haven't gotten there yet, so far is for one tank to take the elites at the front, and one to be tail-end-end charlie getting the ones at the back, and killing them with the aid of one hunter. Strangely enough, the group that's having trouble with the eagle trash downed the bear boss handily and the one that got past the eagle trash can't down the bear boss.

The other group did claim to have far fewer adds tho - they didn't spawn as rapidly. I don't know if it's buggy or not.

We cleared the trash to the Lynx boss, and it was relatively easy. Bearing in mind the Lynx is supposed to be harder than the Eagle, why would the Eagle trash be so much harder? The Lynx boss seemed to hit REALLY hard, we got to the spirit phase but no further.

My first badge purchase was the new idol.

Ferocious Bite said...

@ Brinden

Thanks for the tips, we'll definately be working on our 'trash killing skills'. The trash in ZA is just as challenging as the bosses, it seems.

@ Howardchua

I waited on the idol because I wanted to upgrade my wrists and waist first. After buying both of those, I only had 19 badges left...1 badge short. I have enough now, but I want to assess what I have with what I want. I already have a pretty high dodge and find that I have to downgrade my gear for regular and heroic instances. Although, I know as we do more 25 man content, I'll be wanting that new idol.

@ Lypi

Hmmm...Lynx trash is easy? We jumped ahead to the dragonhawk boss last night and his trash was hard too. Next time I'll suggest we do Lynx before Dragonhawk.