Guild Stuff: Karazhan
Aug. 20th, 2008 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jameydeeK1
==========
Last week, our guild finished Karazhan for the first time ever. This weekend, I approached the raid with some trepidation. Could we replicate our success?
The start was rocky. We were short bodies, so I grabbed a newbie paladin, very little raid experience, but has been working on getting her gear ready for Karazhan. We've actually 9-manned the front half with K1--once, with new healers (like me), half the raid died within the opening seconds of the fight and we ended killing Maiden with only 5 players standing for 90% of the fight, but in the back half, that extra body, no matter how small the damage contribution, can make the difference. Front half, even with some mishaps, was cleared in under two hours. We've done it in less than 90 minutes, but with the new person, I had to explain each boss fight. (Egad, sometimes it reminds me of my old job at the educational institution, when I'd have to give occasional workshops on how to use a word processor... Same words every time, blah, blah, blah ::insert Charlie Brown adult voice here::)
So we went through the back door. Normally, we clear the path to Curator first, but two pulls in, you can get to Nightbane. We hesitated at the junction and I said, "No, K1 does not skip bosses, not any more. To Nightbane!" First pull was bad and we wiped. 1) Priest (me) forgot to put a fear ward on the main tank, and 2) main tank forgot about the fear effect and didn't "stance dance" to avoid the fear effect. The second try, Nightbane went down! Curator took a little longer than usual, the DPS was on the low side, but we one-shotted him. Normally, after Curator, we clear past the secret sliding bookcase which houses Illhoof and kill Shade of Aran instead. In the spirit of "Darn it! We can do it!", I said, "Illhoof!" Again, took two tries, but he went down! Shade also was a two-putt...for some reason he's our albatross...a little more DPS and we'd kill him before he could summon the elementals, but we're not quite there yet. Yet again, we came to a decision path: easy Chess event where no one dies or take on the ghost dragon Netherspite. We went for Netherspite. We struggled a bit with Netherspite--just because we had some new people, but Netherspite went down. From there, Chess event then Prince. Those darn infernals give us fits; some of that is just dumb luck, but Prince went down and we were DONE.
Kara cleared in one session, our first time ever! 5.5 hours; probably a good 30 minutes lost to explanations and questions, another 30 lost to waiting on people who needed to go AFK (Hey, if the Pizza delivery guy is at the door, you gotta take care of it! :P Ditto, if the kids pop out of bed!), 30 minutes to wipes and regrouping and rebuffing. So, if we one-shotted the bosses on the back half and didn't have to go into extensive explanations, we could reduce the time of the run drastically!
BTW, our little newbie paladin received lots of epic love from the bosses. I think she ended up with 6 or 7 items before the night was done!
-------------------
K2
==========
The Wednesday night K2 raid was somewhat comical to me, painful in others. I'm trying to get some more of the overall guild into the runs, one or two at a time. It can be scary. I prefer to work in one or two fairly new people into the raids in support positions. So if it's a new healer, I like them backed up with some veteran healers until they get some seasoning and gear; same with tanks, I prefer to work them in the second or third offtank role until 1) I feel confident they can hang onto their assigned targets and 2) and they are sufficiently geared to be able to withstand the heavier damage of the back half of the dungeon. We took in a new warrior and a new healer and a feral druid who has been in the raid once or twice before, but we didn't have the back-up healing I wanted. It was rocky. We got past the first boss, but there was no way we were getting any further with the same group! It has been a long time since we've had to re-clear to Attumen, the first boss, because of respawns! I called the raid after the first boss.
Thursday night we had one or two more veterans; we were able to clear the front half before people had to bail to go to bed. And Grimmtooth finally got "Legacy"!!! That is the first time in the 10 months we've run Karazhan that the axe has dropped! We were beginning to doubt its existence! Now if the King's Defender would drop again. I see other guilds...the King's Defender sword drops so often that not only does every warrior in the guild have one, they've got rogues wearing it around town for its looks. It has only dropped once in our 10 month history of running Karazhan--and went to one of the defectors in the recent guild drama! Our premiere main tank was playing his hunter on that run! On the other hand, Attumen's fiery steed, Midnight, which is supposed to be a fabulously rare drop, turned up again!
I probably have the following chronology wrong, but roughly:
Sunday night, K2's main tank was still at work, so we used K1's regular offtank as main tank. We took down Curator, tried Shade multiple times, gave up, and went to Chess. K2's normal main tank arrived, and we killed Prince; I was happy that K2's main tankadin (paladin tank) got his T4 helm finally. He's looking nicely decked out.
Monday night, we went back to Shade and killed him, and Netherspite (K2's first time!) and tried Nightbane. The Nightbane attempts were NOT pretty, but neither were K1's first tries.
K2 was spread out over far tooooo many nights, had a different cast each night, and was mentally exhausting to me to keep coming back, but K2 got 9 out of the 11 bosses down. But we won't do that again. Too grueling. We just have to get more efficient with the time we have. Two nights, sure. Four--NOOOOOOoooooooooooo!
==========
Last week, our guild finished Karazhan for the first time ever. This weekend, I approached the raid with some trepidation. Could we replicate our success?
The start was rocky. We were short bodies, so I grabbed a newbie paladin, very little raid experience, but has been working on getting her gear ready for Karazhan. We've actually 9-manned the front half with K1--once, with new healers (like me), half the raid died within the opening seconds of the fight and we ended killing Maiden with only 5 players standing for 90% of the fight, but in the back half, that extra body, no matter how small the damage contribution, can make the difference. Front half, even with some mishaps, was cleared in under two hours. We've done it in less than 90 minutes, but with the new person, I had to explain each boss fight. (Egad, sometimes it reminds me of my old job at the educational institution, when I'd have to give occasional workshops on how to use a word processor... Same words every time, blah, blah, blah ::insert Charlie Brown adult voice here::)
So we went through the back door. Normally, we clear the path to Curator first, but two pulls in, you can get to Nightbane. We hesitated at the junction and I said, "No, K1 does not skip bosses, not any more. To Nightbane!" First pull was bad and we wiped. 1) Priest (me) forgot to put a fear ward on the main tank, and 2) main tank forgot about the fear effect and didn't "stance dance" to avoid the fear effect. The second try, Nightbane went down! Curator took a little longer than usual, the DPS was on the low side, but we one-shotted him. Normally, after Curator, we clear past the secret sliding bookcase which houses Illhoof and kill Shade of Aran instead. In the spirit of "Darn it! We can do it!", I said, "Illhoof!" Again, took two tries, but he went down! Shade also was a two-putt...for some reason he's our albatross...a little more DPS and we'd kill him before he could summon the elementals, but we're not quite there yet. Yet again, we came to a decision path: easy Chess event where no one dies or take on the ghost dragon Netherspite. We went for Netherspite. We struggled a bit with Netherspite--just because we had some new people, but Netherspite went down. From there, Chess event then Prince. Those darn infernals give us fits; some of that is just dumb luck, but Prince went down and we were DONE.
Kara cleared in one session, our first time ever! 5.5 hours; probably a good 30 minutes lost to explanations and questions, another 30 lost to waiting on people who needed to go AFK (Hey, if the Pizza delivery guy is at the door, you gotta take care of it! :P Ditto, if the kids pop out of bed!), 30 minutes to wipes and regrouping and rebuffing. So, if we one-shotted the bosses on the back half and didn't have to go into extensive explanations, we could reduce the time of the run drastically!
BTW, our little newbie paladin received lots of epic love from the bosses. I think she ended up with 6 or 7 items before the night was done!
-------------------
K2
==========
The Wednesday night K2 raid was somewhat comical to me, painful in others. I'm trying to get some more of the overall guild into the runs, one or two at a time. It can be scary. I prefer to work in one or two fairly new people into the raids in support positions. So if it's a new healer, I like them backed up with some veteran healers until they get some seasoning and gear; same with tanks, I prefer to work them in the second or third offtank role until 1) I feel confident they can hang onto their assigned targets and 2) and they are sufficiently geared to be able to withstand the heavier damage of the back half of the dungeon. We took in a new warrior and a new healer and a feral druid who has been in the raid once or twice before, but we didn't have the back-up healing I wanted. It was rocky. We got past the first boss, but there was no way we were getting any further with the same group! It has been a long time since we've had to re-clear to Attumen, the first boss, because of respawns! I called the raid after the first boss.
Thursday night we had one or two more veterans; we were able to clear the front half before people had to bail to go to bed. And Grimmtooth finally got "Legacy"!!! That is the first time in the 10 months we've run Karazhan that the axe has dropped! We were beginning to doubt its existence! Now if the King's Defender would drop again. I see other guilds...the King's Defender sword drops so often that not only does every warrior in the guild have one, they've got rogues wearing it around town for its looks. It has only dropped once in our 10 month history of running Karazhan--and went to one of the defectors in the recent guild drama! Our premiere main tank was playing his hunter on that run! On the other hand, Attumen's fiery steed, Midnight, which is supposed to be a fabulously rare drop, turned up again!
I probably have the following chronology wrong, but roughly:
Sunday night, K2's main tank was still at work, so we used K1's regular offtank as main tank. We took down Curator, tried Shade multiple times, gave up, and went to Chess. K2's normal main tank arrived, and we killed Prince; I was happy that K2's main tankadin (paladin tank) got his T4 helm finally. He's looking nicely decked out.
Monday night, we went back to Shade and killed him, and Netherspite (K2's first time!) and tried Nightbane. The Nightbane attempts were NOT pretty, but neither were K1's first tries.
K2 was spread out over far tooooo many nights, had a different cast each night, and was mentally exhausting to me to keep coming back, but K2 got 9 out of the 11 bosses down. But we won't do that again. Too grueling. We just have to get more efficient with the time we have. Two nights, sure. Four--NOOOOOOoooooooooooo!
