Thursday, March 19, 2009

Toon Update: 3/19/2009 - Immortal Follow Up

This is so freak'en frustrating!

We cleared Naxx last night on 25man, and are obviously going for Immortal. I don't know about you guys but when I think about the achievement I compartmentalize the bosses into Hard, Medium, and Relatively Easy. Some of the bosses like Anub'Rekhan I don't really worry about. I consider these bosses relatively easy. Yes, there are things that can kill you if you're careless, but it shouldn't be a problem for an experienced guild. The Medium bosses are those that have things that can kill you quickly but are manageable. They are more risky but if your focused everything will go fine. The hard bosses are the one's I worry about. I put Instructor Raz, Thaddius, Heigan, and KT in this group. These are bosses that have a lot of risk or bad luck can royally mess you up.

So I think of our odds of completing Immortal in terms of how many of each of these types we have left. In the beginning I bearly think about the achievement. With 12 to 15 bosses to go, there is so much that can go wrong its not worth stressing over. So we started with Instructor Raz last night and it was a very smooth kill. I think we have perfected him. It was good to get him out of the way but with 14 bosses left I'm not really thinking about Immortal. After that we cleared the Military wing with no problem. Then we go to the Spider Wing and clear it with no problem. Two wings down, but still 9 bosses to go. Immortal is on my mind a little more but I am still able to ignore it for the most part.

We then head to the Construct wing. For me, this is where things started to get a little tense. Patchwerk is easy, and the kill went smoothly. The kill of Grobbulus when fine also, but after you kill him the poison zones are still around and you are still in combat. I see someone standing close to an expanding cloud and I think. If someone dies now, do we lose Immoral? The person did move but it add a new level of worry and paranoia to my experience because there are a couple of bosses where you don't leave combat right after the boss dies. Gluth went fine also but he always worries me because Decimate takes every one so low.

At Thaddius, my tension shifted into high gear. This is the boss were we lost Immortal last week due to a DC. A couple of people had DCed already that night and a few other people had reported lag. We had a plan to deal with DCs but there was still a ton of stress. We take out the two adds without a problem and then some one misses the Jump. I think "oh crap," but they deal with it well and get back to the group with out dying or crossing charges. At this point I'm only thinking about 1 thing: DO NOT MISS A CHARGE CHANGE. DPS is completely secondary, and if you looked at a WWS of this fight It would look like I played horribly. I procced Wrath Eclipse several times, I let my DoTs drop a couple of times, but none of it really mattered because staying alive was the primary responsibility and we ended up getting Shocking for the one person in raid that didn't already have it.

At this point I've got a count in my head. Five bosses left: Two relatively easy, one medium, and two hard. We head to the Plague wing and kill Noth with out problems. One easy boss down, 4 to go.

Heigan is next. We actually have a member sit out because he has a history of connection issues. Phase one of the fight goes well as usually but as we all know the true danger is the dance. We are so focused on getting this right no one is allowed to DPS during the dance. As I'm running through it looks like a couple of people get close to clipping one of them but we make it though without anyone dying. We go back to phase one and try and kill him before the dance starts again. About half way through I hear the player dying sound and panic. Fortunately it was just the Mage Mirror images, and we kill Heigan without any deaths. One hard boss down, 3 to go.

The last boss in Plague wing Loatheb went down with out any problems. One easy boss down, 2 to go.

On to Sapphiron. I consider Sapphiron a Medium boss. With full frost resist it's pretty easy, but you can get messed up by an unlucky DC or if all of the Ice Blocks are cast on one side of the raid. We ended up killing him with no problem. One easy boss down, 1 hard boss to go.

There is just one boss between us and Immortality. Kel'Thuzad isn't all that tough to kill anymore, but he is tough to have everyone stay alive. There is just so much random stuff that can kill you quickly, from Ice Blocks, Mana Bombs, Void zones, Aggro drops.

Phase one went ok, I was playing very conservatively. Normally I would DPS the Soul Weaver as soon as it spawns, but last night I was on Skeletons and I waited for the Weavers to come out a little bit before I DPS them.

Phase two started ok. Then about 30% - 35% into the fight I hear a player call out "So and So Ice Tombed," and 3 seconds later my GM said "Oh Crap." The player had died. I'm not not looking to assign blame here. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was a fluke maybe someone messed up a little. I don't know, but Immortal was gone.

I don't know what is worse. Having a player die early in the night or a player dying so late in the night. I've had it both ways, but I can't decide which is worse. On the nights where some one died fairly early its very demotivating and just pisses me off, but it relaxes the rest of the run and I can move on easily. The late deaths are just demoralizing. I get over it fairly quickly. In fact i would love to try again tonight if possible, but I need to log off for a little while to recharge. I had planned on leveling my priest a little bit last night, but I wasn't motivated to do it. Anyway, I'll be back to normal and ready to play soon.

The way I see it we have another week or two to try. If we do get complete the achievement of those all time great moments in the game. If that happens it will be worth the wait. If it doesn't, then I will have Ulduar to play with. Its a Win/Win.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man, I know exactly how you feel. After some scary disconnects on Grobbulus and one of our healers DC'ing in a void zone on 4Horseman, we still managed to get up to KT with no one dying. That is, until one of our melee died to KT when threat reset after a MC.

This achievement is definitely not a fun one.

Anonymous said...

KT is sly and very dangerous. The top guild on my server still can't perfect the fight. The second ranked guild managed to get Immortal last week, so this week was a tense race between 1 and 3. My guild, the third ranked, got it and the number one failed again (too bad I'm not a raider or I would have been there =[). I hear the top guild's original attempt failed because a mind controlled player killed another raider. And most of the other guilds on my server who have attempted the fight, failed on KT also. So I believe his to be the most dangerous encounter.

I think a lot of it comes down to personal responsibility. DPS should turn off their meters and make sure they fulfill all their rolls (decursing and such), and same for healers. Immortal isn't a race.

Anonymous said...

Great blog man,
And yeah that night that you get immortal is so awesome.

Has your guild considered doing the wings in reverse difficulty order? (Con > DK > Plague > Arach)

The night we actually did immortal we had someone accidently die on patchwerk when they lagged and ran in before the OT, so we ran out and reset Naxx.

Also had everyone flask because downing bosses faster = less mistakes to be had all around. We actually got 2 different WWS ranked time kills that night because dps was so focused.
Again, thanks for your work for the community.
Antonetz OTM Black Dragonflight US

Pdzikus said...

Oh, I really feel for you man! So close and so far at the same time.
I wish you and your guild good luck - it's the hardest achievement in this game right now, but you can do it :)

I'd love to add handful of tips below, but I don't think there's anything I could post that you don't know at this point :) So once again - Good Luck!

Anonymous said...

We've managed Immortal, but it's fairly time consuming, mostly because we backtrack a lot to cover all the fights where someone's most likely to snuff it. We do pull it a bit differently than you guys:

1. Razuvious
2. Noth
3. Heigan
4. Patchwerk
5. Grobbulus
6. Gluth
7. Thaddius
8. Gothik
9. 4 Horsemen
10. At this point you can do either Loatheb or Spider Wing - you're pretty much home free on the pre-Sapph/KT fights. There is pretty much no excuse for anyone dying on Spider Wing or Loatheb.
11. Sapphiron
12. Kel'Thuzad.

Anyone with serious lag or framerate issues - sit out the fight where it's an issue (Heigan and Thaddius are the irritants here). You only need to be in the Immortal raid for a KT kill anyway so it doesn't matter.

Priests in the raid with Pain Suppression or Guardian Spirit are virtually required for that inevitable Oh Shit moment where someone disconnects on, say, Sapphiron phase 2.

Kel'Thuzad is obviously the major hurdle and we finally got past it by taking a hard look at our raid and splitting our three fastest healers to the left, central, and right portions of the raid for Frost Blast. I OT on this fight and stay in caster form as long as possible to Cyclone any mind-controlled players (it also makes me easier to control if I get MC'd). DPS is a secondary or even tertiary concern here, and people should save their pot cooldowns on this and other fights for a health pot if at all possible.

Immortal is by far the biggest f-ing pain in the ass achievement because there are just so many variables you can't control for (sudden power outage in your tank's house on Thaddius? Check!), but it's so awesome when it finally comes together. I'm kind of torn on whether it should be in the game at all for that reason, because in the end a very healthy percentage of it is just pure luck. So your first Immortal is cool...but repeating it is sheer hell. You *know* you can do it because you've *already* done it, and then all of this STUPID UNCONTROLLABLE CRAP keeps happening!

I'm interested to see whether Blizz programs a similar achievement for Ulduar, or yokes it to the meta-achievement for the drakes.