Monday, April 14, 2008

Al'ar Down Twice

It was a pretty good week for WA. We have been clearing past Al'ar for months to get to VR and Solarion but never trying him. For me it has been quite frustrating because I new that with a little effort we would get him down in no time. Plus, I hated having raid called early because Al'ar trash started to respawn and people didn't want to reclear.

Well anyway, on Monday we finally had enough tanks to make some attempts. Most of the old WA members has made some attempts on Al'ar before so we had a decent idea of how the fight worked. To be honest, its not that hard of a fight. Phase one is a joke. Letting a bunch of caster DPS go wild without a worry of pulling aggro is a dream. This wasn't my situation because I was put on add duty but we have a thousand warlocks and they were going nuts. The only real trick to phase one is the Quill and making sure the tanks jump down quick enough. If you can't get through phase one after a couple of attempts then you either have a problem with the quality of your gear or the quality of your people. Phase 2 is much harder. DPS has to actually worry about aggro and the tanks and healers have to be on the top of their game due to the armor debuff. Couple that with the meteor and random patches of flame on the ground then you have very chaotic fight. We ended up 3 shotting him on Monday and then one shotting him on Thursday. Both kills were sloppy, but that is to be expected when you don't have a lot of experience with the fight.

We didn't have a whole lot of time left after downing Al'ar on Monday, so instead of going and trying out Hyjal or BT we went and put a couple of attempts on Kael'thas. Old WA had never tried Kael before so 80% of us were clueless about the fight and it showed. We did get through phase 1 but were not able to get all of the weapons down in phase 2 and wiped when all the adds repoped in phase 3. It is obvious that we have a lot of work to do before we down him. The main things we need to work on here is killing the adds in the right spot. Then waiting AOE the weapons. If we can pick that up quickly then we should be able to get some good attempts on phase 3. I am not disappointed by our performance at all since it was our first try. I also don't know when we will try him again since our primary focus has become Vashj.

On Wednesday we tryed Vashj for the first time as New WA. Quite a few of us had experience with it from old WA and a few of the people that had left the guild and come back have actually killed her. I must say that our best attempt on Wednesday was better than the best attempt by old WA. Phase 1 went very smoothly as you would expect. Phase 2 is obviously where the problems started. We ended up getting two of the beacons down which I think is pretty good. We had some trouble transferring the Tainted Cores and might have been able to get one or both of the other beacons down if it wasn't for that. We also had some trouble with the elementals getting through. I think this is related to our Tainted Core trouble since it took some people out of action for quite a while. On a personal note I needed to watch my aggro a little better,because I pulled aggro on a Stryder once. Hopefully they will fix Omen soon to make this easier. On a positive note, Stryder DPS was very good. If we can work out the kinks with the cores and people figure out the elementals a little better we should have Vashj down soon.

Toon Update:
Graylo - I didn't get anything from raiding but Graylo had a bit of a big week. As I mentioned in my previous post I have been doing SSO Dailies like mad to get to Exalted. I stepped it up a notch this past week and did all of the SSO dailies ever night. I ended up hitting exalted on Sunday and was able to craft the [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone]. I replaced my [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] with the it. In some situations I may be losing a little damage here, but I doubt I keep 10 stacks of the buff up all that often. My average plus damage from the card is probably close to what the stone provides, but the stone also has the bonus to pots.

I had also been farming badges for a while so that I would be ready when the new badge vendor dropped. Oddly enough the new badge vendor also became available on Sunday. From the 2.3 badge vendor I picked up [Blessed Elunite Coverings] & [Mask of Primal Power]. I thought about picking these pieces up earlier but didn't because I would have lost 27 Spell Hit doing so. However, with the 2.4 badge vendor I was able to pick up [Fused Nethergon Band] to replace the lost hit. So, in one day I upgraded 4 of my items.

Graypal - I haven't done as many dailies with him, but I will be doing a lot more now that Graylo is exalted. I would like to get him to revered for the mace if I don't get a better one first. The necks at exalted aren't that bad either, but I doubt I will be focusing on this rep grind like I did Graylo's. The upgrades just aren't that big or that important right now. I do need to get him into normal MagT to unlock heroic mode. That way I could get in on some of those runs with him. There are several items in Heroic MagT that I would like to have on him. I did run Kara with him on Friday. Wasn't to bad, our group was very strange and kind of thrown together. I ended up only getting badges from it but that isn't that bad.

Grayfel - Once again Grayfel, fell victem to me focusing more on my 70's. There was just to much to do for Graylo and Graypal. I did work on him a little Sunday night. I had hoped to get him to 37 before the I quit but I was just to tired and only got him halfway there. Luckily for him there is less I need to do with the 70's now. I hope to work on him some during the week this week to use up his rested XP. Other than that there is not a whole lot I can say.

No comments: