Light’s Defender

Well, New Moon took another crack at the Shade of Aran on Monday.  Things didn’t go quite as well as we would have hoped.  We made four attempts before we started to get respawns, and none of those attempts came close to our best of 24% health.  It seems to me that we need to do two things; (1) we need to better control Aran’s drop of health and mana so that we don’t get polymorphed right around when the elementals spawn, and (2) we need to figure out an effective strategy for dealing with the elementals.  Additionally, we need to figure out how to keep people alive during that fight.

My opinion is that most of the things in that fight are, for the most part, avoidable.  The only thing that is not, is the pyroblast he does after the polymorph.  My sense is that not everyone is sufficiently on their toes to avoid what can be avoided.  No one should be taking so much damage in there that they die within the first 2 minutes of that fight.  We keep learning that the higher we go in the tower, the more unforgiving these bosses seem to be.  The Shade of Aran is no exception. People need to be at 110%, me included.

After we exahsted our attempts on Aran, we decided to give Maiden a try.  She was a bit overdue.  Let me tell you, that fight went like clockwork.  Haliot (Holy Priest) did an amazing job of hopping in and out of Maiden’s consecrate just in time to break her Repentance.  That allowed him to keep our tank Arzen (Protection Warrior) up and I was able to just focus on cleansing her Holy Fire and backup heal as needed.  I’m glad to say that I lost no one to Holy Fire in that fight.  Sadly, Hal kicked the bucket on her last Repentance, primarily because she delayed her Repentance so long that his shield was down and he was fully exposed.  By then, she only had 5% health left to her name, so I helped heal and we won the day.

Maiden gave up the Barbed Choker of Discipline and the Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden.  Arzen had the choker already and he had his T4 gloves compared to my Felsteel Gloves, so he was gracious enough to let me have both items since they were major upgrades for me.  Thank you Arzen!!!

After Maiden, we took a quick crack at Attumen for the badge.  That fight was a non-event.  Easy as pie, as well it should be by now.  He dropped the Gauntlets of Renewed Hope, and being the only Paladin in the group, I picked those up as well. I was using some crappy “of Intellect” green in my healing set. So crappy that people laughed when I showed it to them. I’m glad I have some real healing gloves now.  That was my lucky day for drops; three upgrades, two of which were tanking upgrades (thanks to the generosity of others).

Tonight, we will take another crack at Aran.  I hope we can warm it up in there and take him down with a little focus, skill and luck.

… all the way from 25%.  But I got your attention, didn’t I. 

New Moon took a crack at Aran yesterday for the first time ever.  All-in-all, a great showing by New Moon.  Thinking back on when we first did Attumen, and Maiden, and Moroes, and Opera and Curator, this was our best first attempt in Kara.  We tried him maybe four or five times, and on our best attempt, we got him down to 24% and in most other cases he was easily in the 30%-range.

I think our biggest challenge was dealing with the elementals that he spawns at 40% health.  We need to figure out how to deal with them; meaning we need to keep them focused on the right individuals, while not letting Aran run wild with no interrupts.  We all felt pretty good about our first night with him, and have a few good ideas for the second attempt.  I think we’ll get him down real soon.

Nicely done, New Moon!!

New Moon went into the tower known as Karazhan once again. Our goal today was to see how quickly we could move through the place. Additionally, we were scheduled to attempt Moroes, Maiden and if there was time, Opera as well. Our group consisted of Arzen (Protection Warrior), Savita and Kyllyn (Healer Priests), Zinshara (Warlock), Ktarye (Elemental Shaman), Grimix and Zophia (Frost Mages), Ariose (Hunter), Alin (Rogue) and me.

We got started later then scheduled, but not by much; so off we went after Moroes. Honestly, we took him down like clockwork. We lost Alin during that fight. It was to a garrote, as I recall, but we did fine finishing him and his guests off. Moroes dropped the Idol of the Avian Heart and the Signet of Unshakable Faith. No one needed them, so I got won the Idol and Alin won the signet. One Void Crystal for me and two for Alin. Not too bad.

After that we took a stab at Maiden. Again, clearing the trash was pretty straight-forward. And as a reward for our speediness, the Boots of Elusion dropped again. Since both Arzen and I already have them and there were no other plate wearers in our raid, they got sharded. Grimix got two glowing Void Crystals for his winning roll.

We finally got to Maiden and as usual, it was Arzen’s job to tank. My job was to deck out my healing gear, keep Blessing of Sacrifice on Arzen, cleanse Holy Fire, and heal Arzen while everyone else is in Repentance. Seems simple enough, but wait ….

On the first attempt, it started going downhill pretty quickly and it was all thanks to yours truly. Maiden decided to throw out Repentance very early on in the fight. So early that it caught most of us off guard. The good news is that I had Blessing of Sacrifice on Arzen. The bad news that by the time I realized what had happened, I did not have enough time to get my heal off and lost Arzen. That lead to the inevitable wipe.

On try two, things started off pretty good. I kept Blessing of Sacrifice going and cleansed Holy Fire quickly enough. Unfortunately, at one point, one of our healers got Holy Fire. I cleansed it before she died, but a Repentance followed right after with enough damage to take her out. One healer down, we keep going. Things started getting hectic. Ktarye did his best to fill the healing void. In another case of bad timing, Holy Fire goes off just as I’m casting the blessing on Arzen, so I couldn’t cleanse it fast enough. That caused us to lose our other priest. Now I have to help keep Arzen up with Ktarye.  Neither of us being specced for healing makes that a challenging job on a boss fight.

The fight goes on and you’ll never guess who got the next Holy Fire while I was in mid-heal. Ktarye. I couldn’t cleanse it fast enough and with Maiden down to like 15%, I’m now the only healer left alive and I’m running low on mana with my potions on cooldown. Everyone that’s left starts going to town. I do my best to keep Arzen up. Heal after heal, and the inevitable happens. I run low on mana.

The good news is that at this point she is at like 7%, the bad news is that I can’t heal anymore. Arzen hits Shield Wall and I notice that I have enough mana for my Hammer of Wrath. If you can’t heal, then do what you can.  So I did and sent the hammer flying on its merry way. That along with some spectacular DPS from the team and Maiden went down with quite a few of us down too. I think that was the most stressful encounter I have had yet in the game. That is at least true as a healer.

Anyway, so Maiden drops the Bracers of Maliciousness and the Totem of Healing Rains. The bracers go to Alin and the totum to Ktarye. Nicely done, guys!! Time is looking good, so we keep going on to Opera.

Trash goes fairly smoothly, we get to the event and Oz is our performance of the day. I had a little trouble picking up Tinhead and Tito tonight for some reason. I did what I always do, but it was just not good enough this time around for some reason. We lost Savita early on. It’s always tough to lose a healer, but we still were able to drop them. It took some fancy kiting of Tinhead to give the Kyllyn and Ktarye (and me as well, I guess) time to regenerate some mana ahead of the Crone.  After we mana up, we finish Tinhead and take on the Crone.

The Crone goes down, and she drops the Blue Diamond Witchwand, which went to Savita and the Earthsoul Leggings that got Grimix another two Void Crystals. Congrats you two!

Beleive it or not, we downed three bosses and still had a little time left, so we went after Attumen for good measure. He was a piece of cake. He dropped the Worgen Claw Necklace and the Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation. The gloves went to Alin and the necklace became 2 Void Crystals for Savita.

For me, I walked away with a Void Crystal and 7 Badges of Justice.  That’s not really bad.  Plus, I think tonight we made New Moon history.  This is the first time that I can recall us dropping four bosses in Karazhan in one night.  Congrats New Moon!!  But looking at everything that these bosses dropped for us tonight, I have to ask ….

Where’s all the tanking gear???

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Serrot

New Moon ventured once again last night into the rotting tower of Karazhan. We had already cleared our way past Moroes and Dorothy earlier in the week, so it was time to take a crack at disassembling The Curator.

Pulling the trash up to him was pretty straight forward, even though we all seemed a little bit off our game. I was surprised how many times I died during some trash fights. It looked like a combination of not getting Holy Shield off and a late heal or two. But we did get to The Curator fairly quickly.

Our group consisted of me, Arzen (Warrior “Beat Me” Tank), Haliot (Healing Priest of the Ages), Veldamirx (Holy “The New Guy” Paladin), Zinshara (Lock and Resident Bolt Soaker), Ktarye (All-around Kick-Ass Shammy), Grimix (Frost Mage God), Zophia (Frost Mage Goddess), Cadeus (Rich Rogue) and Alin (Poor Rouge and our GM so he goes last ). Arzen was tank du jour for this fight, so I decked out my pitiful healing gear and did my best to keep Zin at full health. After the second evocation, somehow, Zinshara’s imp managed to pull aggro off of Arzen and that seemed to take out the imp. Then, about 45 seconds later, The Curator decided he hated Zin more and took her out. It all went downhill from there.

The second attempt was worse. After the first evocation, it seems that The Curator hated Zin more then Arzen again and took her out nice and early. Zin, I think it’s time to change your perfume.

On the third time, however, it all worked nicely. Zin still pulled aggro, but I was ready with a bubble and Arzen was quick on the taunt. After the 3rd evocation, The Curator was no longer operational. Not our best showing ever; but we’re results oriented so I guess it doesn’t really matter how we got there.

The Curator dropped the Gloves of the Fallen Defender and the Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards. The T4 Token went to Haliot and the shoulders to Ktarye. Congrats guys!!

After that, we started to make our way to the Chess Event. We have the shades down pretty well, and the Consortium dudes are pretty straight-forward. So we took our second crack at playing chess, WoW-style. That is really a fun game. It’s sorta cool taking over a chess piece and thinking like a pawn or a knight. Those are the two pieces that I controlled.

We took their king down on the first try for some easy loot. And you can’t imagine what was in that chest: King’s Defender. Sweet!! The dice were favoring Arzen, which was great. He was due for an upgrade, any upgrade. And since I have the Sun Eater, I would have passed anyway if I had won the roll.

All-in-all, a pretty good night. A little sloppy, but still good.