Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Swords Again

So, Forge, my guild, is "in" Karazhan.

yay.

Well, they're not in at this very moment, of course, but we're trying some bosses in there, and doing fairly decently.

Here's how it went down:

I got all the keyed people together. 16 at that point. Hard to make two 10-man teams with 16, and hard to fill one and not have 6 angry players. Well, I can't satisfy everyone. I made the best 10-man team I could, more or less to set the par. If the best 10 guildies can't take the first boss, then perhaps we shouldn't be in there. If I took anyone other than the best 10, then if we failed, I would have too many factors, and would have to try it again, anyway, with the best 10. Regardless of why I do the things I do, after a few quick trips through the insanely fast respawning trash mobs (that hit much harder than the boss), we took down Attumen, on our 2nd or 3d attempt. Either way, not a bad way to start.

We then made our way through the "back" way to the banquet hall, which takes you through the kitchen. Let me tell you. Avoid going that way. It's a nightmare. Too many mobs, and the chefs really know how to carve you up. Either way, our biggest problem was the non-crowd-controllable mobs. Stewards, valets. They really suck.

After a very arduous clearing of the banquet hall, we laid out a plan to take down Moroes, the Boris Karloff impersonating undead rogue host of the phantasmagorical party. He proved infinitely more difficult than Attumen. So much so, that after about 3 wipes, having to re-clear our way at least once, we suspended activities for the evening, and went to think about how we could defeat him.

A few days later, we were back. But this time, we decided to clear the stairwell direction, which led us through a corner of the ballroom. This was a much better way to go, as we only had to clear a handful of mobs before clearing the banquet hall. Our plan was this: we would shackle the "heavies" of the minions, we would ice trap the paladin, and we would kite/dps the holy priest. Then we'd kill the paladin, then one of the shackles, then the other, then Moroes.

Well, with shackles breaking all over the place for a variety of reasons, and with our healers getting one-shotted by stray minions, and with a variety of members getting garroted to death quicker than they could announce it, we didn't last too long. So, we modified our approach. Now we'd kill the priest and then paladin, but we'd keep the other two shackled while we worked on Moroes (ultimately reducing the number of garrotes he could issue).

5%

That's what we got him to. Ugh. So close!

We tried a few more times, and tried again another night. No success. I'm really not sure what the problem is, other than the fact that we all need to gear up a bit more.

We'll try him again, but I want to get everyone some gear from Attumen while we're at it, and try some of the beasts in the meantime.

Oh, and post-script, the 6 who didn't go with the main group found 4 pugs willing to go, and they took down Attumen as well! Woot!

Gruul's Lair.

I plan to take the kids into Gruul's Lair this coming Friday to see how we all fare. Just for the first boss, of course. But he drops some phat lewts, as they say, and it's important that the guildies are getting a challenge as well as an opportunity to gear up a bit.

I think we're going to get slaughtered, myself.

But that's me.

I'm pessimistic and cynical.

Naw, I'm not. I'm optimistic and rational.

And schizophrenic.

I'll let you know how Gruul's Lair goes.


Swords Again

When I was doing Molten Core back in the day with a companion guild, I got some nice sword that dropped. Well, as you all know, I'm totally addicted to my mace spec. However, I wasn't really getting the kind of damage I needed for a raid group with my Mass of McGowan and Cold-forged Hammer, or whatever I was using. They were old, and it was a pain to get any mace upgrades (like it is now, mostly). But this new sword had some very nice dps stats. So, I grabbed my second best sword, which was sitting in the bank, and slightly altered my spec, with an eye for pve. (I usually travel around with a more balanced combat spec, which allows me some survivability in pvp, but still lets me kick ass in raid instance damage). And, it worked. My damage shot up so much, it was sick. But then, Blizzard released their firm grip on high level pvp items, so I spammed pvp until I could get the Grand Marshal one-hand maces. Yeah, two of them. Scroll down, you'll see them. Anyway, they were wonderful, and helped me get over the curve of not being sword or dagger specced. I've used them up to just the other day in the expansion without too much problem.

Of course what that really meant is that my damage in groups was decent, but not up to par with what I thought it should be (like, #1). Not only were all the mages out-damaging me, but the friggin druid tank was out-damaging me!!! Well, I can't have that.

So, like any WoW addict, I started to farm for Aldor rep. Then I figured it'd take me about a year to farm to exalted, at the rate I normally farm. So, I bought it. It cost about 1000 gold to get from 3600 in revered to 21000, which hit exalted. I bought up all the marks of sargeras and fel armaments the auction house had to offer, and BAM, I was exalted. That felt good. No more forced farming.

Why'd I pick Aldor? Vindicator's Brand. So, bought that for a hefty amount, and then grabbed my next best sword, Revenger, modified my spec again slightly to account for swords, and then skilled up.

So far, I'm impressed with my damage output. It's quite high, and I think in the right setting, I can be #1 again. (but not in those instances that require a ton of aoe damage, or where I'm getting CCd all the time).

So, now, I'm working on gathering up gear from instances and raids, and slowly increasing my arena points in order to get my Gladiator maces and switch back to my fave!

woot

etc.