Thursday Ulduar-25 Run Takes on Circus-like Atmosphere

by Milric, 24 hours ago

Thursday's Ulduar-25 run had a number of applicants and under geared members. Consequently, some fights presented a greater challenge than usual.

In other words - sometimes I could hear the circus music playing

Boss fights can be pretty crazy when the run has a number of raiders that do not have a lot of experience with the events. For instance, the raid did as much damage to Razorscale on the second downing as they did to him on the first downing... and the first downing used Heroism. Kologarn wiped us due to some odd rumbler placement and some eye-beam dragging. He then wiped us again when, amongst other things, one of the tanks ran off the edge and plummeted to their death. We actually beat Hodir 2 seconds AFTER he berserked.

All in all, it was one of those fun nights where raiders without a lot of experience got to take a crack at new things. When viewed as that, it went well. To the veterans that were not used to dying on Kologarn, I appreciate your patience and good humor

Wednesday Has Both a CC-25 and CC-10 Run

by Milric, 2 days ago

Enough members signed up on Wednesday to cover both a CC-25 and a CC-10 run. I believe we got everyone in that signed up. The web site was down during invites. I may have missed one member but they were in Onyxia's Lair at the time.

Both runs cleared all the bosses. The CC-25 run had a few issues with disconnects. That slowed the run down a bit, but we still cleared everything by the 2 hour mark.

I take no credit for getting everyone into a raid. The fact that, with applicants, we had exactly 35 people was more a function of dumb luck then the outcome of any grand design.

That said, the night was an example of what we are shooting for in the midterm. Everyone who signs up gets into a raid.

CoD Takes Another Shot At Heroic Northrend Beasts-25

by Milric, 4 days ago

Tuesday's run went into Heroic CC-25, taking a second crack at Heroic Northrend Beasts. We did not down them, but I did not expect us to. I really wanted to see improvement over our last visit; we certainly improved.

After the first 45 minutes, it became a given that, each attempt, we would down Gormok and get to the worms with everyone still standing. We have a solid tanking, healing, snobald strategy for Gormok and it works repeatedly.

The worms gave us a lot of trouble. The trouble breaks into two categories: mistakes and weak strategy. Most of the mistakes were just due to inexperience. Melee would drift in front of a worm and take a breath attack for instance. That type of thing just takes practice to correct. However, our overall bile strategy was not working for us. After the evening's run, a few raiders discussed the issue in vent. We believe we have a solution for the bile problem. It will actually make Gormok slightly more difficult, but it should make the worms significantly easier.

We actually got to Icehowl once. I'll have to look at the logs, but I believe we had 23 or 22 people up at the time. We DPSed him for a full cycle, keeping everyone standing, until his charge phase. He tagged a raider on the charge, enraged, and that was all she wrote. Again, dodging him on Heroic is just a practice issue. After we start getting to him regularly, we will have that down.

The team performed well, with all three roles being up to the task. The tanks held agro, could take the hits, and could position the mobs. The healers could keep people standing (as long as they did not stand in fire/poison) including several times were a healer had a snobald on them. The DPS were meeting the various timers in the fight. Good work.

Along the way, a second team went into Onyxia-10 and downed her; scoring the achievement for a few people. Good work there as well.

We will make a serious run at them next week. If our change in the bile strategy works, we may down them.

This Week's Raid Schedule (11/3 - 11/9)

by Milric, 5 days ago

We will try the Heroic Crusaders' Coliseum (25) run on Tuesday week. As a PROGRESSION run, we will slot the best 25 man team we can make. Tuesdays tend to be good signup days for us. We hope to have a 10 man team as well for those that we cannot get into the PROGRESSION run.

Wednesday will be the normal mode Crusaders' Coliseum (25) run. We had a lot of signups last Wednesday, enough to run both a 25 and a 10. Should that happen again, we will likely have an additional 10 man this week as well; but we have not put it on the calendar.

Due to a number of behind the scenes issues, we will not be re-using last week's Ulduar (25) raid ID; we will just start a fresh instance this week. Thursday will be the entry run on that. We will likely have a number of applicants joining us for this run.

We have left Friday clear. We may try to have a Heroic CC-10 run that day by invitation. It depends on raid leader availability.

Saturday is another sanctioned CC-10 in the afternoon for those that cannot make the weekday runs.

Monday we will hit the later Ulduar (25) bosses.