by Milric, 2 days agoThursday's Heroic Crusaders' Coliseum run pushed as far into Heroic Northrend Beasts as we have ever gotten. We got to Icehowl multiple times and learned a few things about how to heal the Icehowl tank.
DPS was smoking. Without using Heroism, Gormok was dropping sometimes as much as 26 seconds before normal worm agro. At that point, they literally are triggered to enter before the normal time; that's how much ahead of the timers we were.
While there were issues here and there, the primary issue was tank survivability. Garidel stepped up to OT tonight. He did a fine job, but his gear is right on the edge. Gormok can unload a lot of damage in under a second. If you have 500hp more than that, you're good; 500hp less than that, not so much. We will work on that issue over the coming days.
We went with more range DPS this time. CoD has always been melee heavy. The cramped conditions on the worm cause problems for an overly heavy melee crew. We had a few melee sit out tonight and brought in a couple more range. It seemed to help the melee survive on certain burning bile hits.
Fine work on everyone's part. It was exciting to be that close.
by Milric, 3 days agoWe got two, separate 25 man teams through CC-25 this week.
Wednesday's run had its bumps. But, to add a reality check, it's hard to complain too much when the team one shots all five encounters. Further, the run had a few people in it that did not have any CC experience. Which makes the one shots even more impressive.
Totalling everything up - we got 45 mains, 4 alts and 1 guest through CC-25. Every main that signed up got in save one (who signed up after I had slotted the guest). And I learned a little bit about slotting for these. A few mains will sneak in with late sign ups. In the future, I will heavily favor alts for the 2nd run - so I can bump them if mains show up. I slightly favored the 2nd run for alts this week, expecting one or two mains to sign up late. I was not ready for four mains to sign up and that left me without enough alts to bump.
Along with the two CC-25's we also got two CC-10's in. We have another scheduled for Saturday and I believe there is even another unsanctioned one getting together.
A number of people stepped up to lead and co-lead raids. Great work on that.
I hope we can do it again next week.
by Milric, 4 days agoAs mentioned below, we scheduled two separate Crusaders' Coliseum - 25 events for this week. We pulled off the first event on Tuesday.
The CC-25 team cleared the place with five one shots. The team had a little trouble with Faction Champions but they pulled through.
Along the way, we held a CC-10 run in parallel. That also went well, with five one shots.
We have a second, full team scheduled for tomorrow. We are relying on everyone showing up as we just barely have enough. If we come up shy, we could likely find one or two folks among the applicants. Addtionally, we will likely try for a parallel CC-10 run if there is interest.
Good start - let's keep it going.
by Milric, 4 days agoMonday's PROGRESSION run had to be abandoned when the Whirlwind Group's instance servers came tumbling down, taking our CC-25 with them. Ah well, such is virtual life.
The team's DPS was low; we struggled to kill Gormok in time. But we were killing him in time and DPS was improving over subsequent attempts.
Perhaps next time.
by Milric, 5 days agoWe will try some new things this week.
Note that all of the weekday Crusaders' Coliseum attempts start at 7:30 server time.
First off, we will be trying to run not one, but two entirely separate Crusaders' Coliseum-25 runs. We have been putting the pieces into place for weeks and this will be the week we try it out. We have CC-25 raids scheduled for both Tuesday and Wednesday. Both runs will have a few alts and perhaps an applicant or two slotted in them to fill them to 25. Neither run is 'the strong run' nor is either run 'the weak run.' We will spread the tanking, healing and DPSing talent as evenly as possible across both runs. It is our goal to get all the sufficiently geared, sufficiently skilled people into a CC-25 run this week.
Signups tend to be high on Tues/Wed, so we have scheduled additional CC-10 runs in parallel. In weeks past, these runs were the overflow for the CC-25s and we gave DKP to those that made room for others by stepping out of the CC-25s. We will not be doing that this week as we should have enough CC-25 capacity for everyone.
If you can attend either run, then sign up for both - that flexibility helps us schedule solid teams. If you can only attend on one of those days, then just sign up for that day. We will do our very best to get you in that run.
We moved the Heroic Crusaders' Coliseum-25 PROGRESSION attempt to Thursday. The last time we did this, we did not get enough veteran signups for a run. So, if you have any interest in Heroic level content, be sure to sign up for the Thursday run.
We have placed a Heroic Crusaders' Coliseum-10 run on the schedule for Friday evening. PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS RUN. It is on the schedule as a placeholder. We will be sending out invitations throughout the week as we try to build a team capable of heroic level content.
We have a CC-10 run schedule for Saturday afternoon.
Lastly, next Monday will be a PROGRESSION run for Hard Mode Ulduar-25 content. The goals for Monday will be Flame Leviathan +4 and XT-002 (Heartbreaker).
Hopefully, we'll have something for everyone this week. We hope to see everyone out there.
by Milric, 5 days agoFriday's Heroic CC-10 attempt became known as the 'Pro As Hell' run. With four one shots and only three total deaths, the team plowed through the place. The raiders wanted to be fresh for Anub'arak, so they left the Coliseum with a strong run under their belt.
Sunday's Heroic CC-10 continuation will become known as the 'Damn It!' run. The team wiped on Anub'arak 33 times over a little more than 4 hours. After about 20 wipes, we finally had one magical run where we got deep into phase 3, dropping him to about 7%. That run gave everyone the confidence that we could do, we just had to do it.
After that, we started seeing phase 3 more regularly, sometimes three times in a row. We would typically get him to roughly 10% before the wipe. That last 10% felt like it was miles away.
We tweaked the healing, stocked up on 55 gallon drums of Nature Protection Potions and kept at it. Everything fell into place on the 34th attempt. A healer, the main tank, and two DPS all died in the closing seconds. The six remaining members powered him down.
So - after roughly 5 weeks and a little more than 100 attempts, Anub'arak finally fell. Scads of people were involved over the course of it all. Roughly 20 people have been in the run at some point. And, while Felanima was never in a run, she crafted 70
Mighty Nature Protection Potions that turned out to be a key to winning the fight.
According to the various tracking sites, CoD is the only Alliance guild on SoE to have cleared Heroic CC-10. Considering the number of people involved along the way, that should give a lot of people something to be proud of.
Of course we want more people to see the place. We have struggled to get a second team going; something always seems to prevent a sufficiently skilled team from forming up when the day arrives. We will keep working that issue.
Great job!
by Milric, 6 days agoWe had enough signups on Saturday to actually run two separate CC-10 runs. Both runs cleared everything. One run actually one shot all five bosses with no deaths - yes, no one died on any of the kills.
It sounded like everyone had a good time. Fine work.
Heroic Ulduar (25 Man)
