I'm delighted to say after 11 wipes total, our guild downed the final raid boss, Queen Azshara. It seems disingenuous to say "killed", since she was rescued at the last moment by the N'zoth, the Elder God we accidentally freed in the process, but, you know, you take your victories where you can. The fact it was on my birthday was just gravy.
I mentioned earlier the fight had a ridiculous number of mechanics. Trying to list them all won't give the fight justice, but I'll try to link the video of the kill later to give a sense of the controlled chaos. It begins with a pair of minibosses that must be tanked separately or together (depending on their current mood) and killed together, before the REAL fight begins. The main highlights are wards around the room that have to be empowered and one that gives a damage boost to the boss that has to be depowered. Everyone has to manage these (Doing so gives a 2 minute debuff reducing your max health by 10% a stack) and there are many adds and things happening that drain energy from the first and boost the latter. Each person must follow decrees to stand apart, soak damaging orbs, stack on other people, and the like. A number of different types of adds have to be burned down, including a couple of mini-bosses that shield themselves from all damage. The shield can be broken by a spear thrown by a different add at a player, who must position themselves to have the spear (which passes through the player) pop the shield, but not any of the pillars in the room or a control console. The control console has to be periodically depowered during the last phase of the fight, and each depowering will kill a DPS (after giving them a 40 second damage buff) or drain wards by 30% or something else horrible. It's totally nuts.
We're going to try heroics next week and they'll be DPS auditions on Thursday. I may not make the cut, but that's ok-- I've now been part of successful boss kills well before they hit LFR. Speaking of, I wound up leading a LFR raid over the weekend, because it was painfully clear most people had no idea what was going on. I think there's usually 1/3rd of the players who have a clue or at least watched a video or read the dungeon journal and 2/3rds that will just try to 'wing it', trusting to be carried. When it was painfully clear we weren't going to survive the fights with 2/3rds dead, I stepped up, summarized mechanics, and called out during the fights. By god, it worked. We wiped once on one boss, but otherwise it was a smooth, smooth run that wound up with only 2 people dead on the same boss we wiped on the first time.
Otherwise, I've been feeding my pet addiction. I've caught just about every pet I can in the wilds (there's a couple left in Pandaria I just haven't gotten to yet) and have been steadily adding from the Auction House when I see them drop well below the average prices. Currently at 792 unique pets (which is a ridiculous number), with the next achievement at 800. The final (!) achieve is at 1000 pets, but I don't see myself getting to that point. The last 50 or so have been challenging and it is just getting more and more expensive at 2k+ each.
No comments:
Post a Comment