Friday, April 10, 2009

PUG Naxxramas teaches the virtue of focus

So I'm wrapping up my post-Naxx business last night at around 1:45 AM, when I see...

Triveri has gone offline

Really? A second later Caz comes on, and I realize the most unlikely pairing of two guildies up at 2 AM has occurred. Of course my eyes were probably mighty bloodshot so I just said hello and logged off shortly thereafter. But anyways, another great night of Warcraft if not relatively unexpected. I was in a Naxx or raiding mood all day yesterday for whatever reason, so after getting home and taking car eof the trash and such, I logged on and looked in LFG. Well there happened to be a group of 8 looking for a healer and an offtank. Small guild of about 60 members had about 5 slots and was running it, the rest were puggers. What intrigued me is that the people in the guild were pretty well geared, a little better than myself. They grab me right away without checking armory, which raised a warning flag since I logged out in solo +hit gear, but I hoped for the best. We get people summoned and first pull was around 7:15 PM.

We proceed to annihilate the place for three hours. I got the Arachnophobia achievement (kill all bosses of Arachnid within 20 minutes), we looted emblems and moved on to trash immediately except for the loot master, things were very smooth. We had 6 DPS and 2 Holy Priest healers, so that helped our speed since the healing was more than enough. We killed Arachnid and Plague quarters without losinga single member on any boss fight except Heigan, on which we lost 1 person (sad! another achievement lost). They then go to Construct Quarter, which our guild always saves for last. We got to Gluth and wiped for the first time all night because the kiter did not do a good enough job keeping zombie chows in the back and the kiter healer (not me) ran OOM too fast. We re-grouped and knocked the mangy mutt out on try two, then cleared Thaddius, and the first two bosses in Military with dispatch.

At this point it is literally 10:20. Three hours in the place, and 12 bosses down. In a semi-PUG. Then shit hit the fan. We had a bad pull on the way to Four Horsemen which involved 2-3 sets of death knights and at least one shade. We almost downed them, but it was too much for 2 healers. Then one of our mages D/C's without warning. We proceed to Four Horsemen and try a strategy I'm unfamiliar with since we only have 2 healers, and that is to pull the front horsemen back to the rear and have the tanks tank 2 horsemen at once and everyone switch sides in the back constantly. More efficient, yes. Harder to pull off, yes. We wiped doing that twice, set our 2 druids in the back and tried the normal way twice, all fails. They were about to call it since they had a "hard stop" time of midnight, but right then I finally got a guildie to join us after begging in gchat for an hour off and on. Our remaining mage swapped to his Healadin and we cleared Four Horsemen.

Had 2 wipes on Sapphy, and after the second one our guidlie disappears and D/C's. Devastating, no? Well apparently not as we give it one more go and down Sapphy and Kel'Thuzad easily with 9. We really only needed help surviving Four Horsemen I guess. The only hiccup was losing the kiter tank at about 35% to a frost block, but the main tank just pulled up his britches, taunted the adds, and had 3 healers keeping him up the rest of the way. So while the last 3 bosses took 3 hours or so, I am absolutely confident had it not been for douche bag mage dropping group (Belmardy for your ignore/black lists), we would've been done in under 4 hours. These people were not decked out in Naxx-25 gear either...just Naxx-10 gear for the guildies. We literally sharded 13 epics on the run, and I picked up two epic rings, tier shoulders to give me the 2 piece set I want (the other 3 pieces are slight downgrades for me), and enough emblems to go buy an epic offhand since I'm going with the best mace in the game now. So I'm all epic'd out except for a wand, but I know right where to get once if I can get lucky. I'd literally be rolling offspec stuff now in Naxx, so perfect timing for Ulduar as far as Ekat is concerned.

So that's it. Perhaps my last legitimate Naxx run, and a full clear. It really makes me wonder about the guild we're in though, as a few things stood out. (1) We downed Sapphy and K'T with 9 and not anywhere close to full frost resist gear for most, which means we should be able to do it easily with 10. (2) We ran basically the whole place with 2 healers, which made things quicker...with geared healers such as Ruach, Ronei, Clapp, and myself...we should be able to do this and make more room for DPS. Perhaps quicker runs for the guild. (3) We lost the offtank against K'T early in the kiting phase, a.k.a. the worst thing that can happen, and we still beat K'T with 8 left. (4) Things go infinitely faster with a loot master who stays to conduct rolls, or in our new system bids, while everyone else keeps going. You can take a 5-10 minute break after 2 quarters, but we should be more serious about efficiency. (5) It is obviously possible to get "The Undying" and I had not seen the possibilities until I stepped out from our guild runs.

OK enough of that. But things to think about, and things that make me a little frustrated with our much bigger guild. Yes we are casual because people like me cannot commit to a raid schedule, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be bringing our A-game when we do raid.

DF

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