Pwn, Pwn on the Ranged
The steady march of PodPwnage through Molten Core continues at full speed. Friday night we went back and began anew, as Tuesday's server maintenance resets the instance, as always. Unlike Zul'Gurub, which has a 3 day timer, we have a full 7 days to clear this place out. Friday would be the big test as to whether or not the previous week was a fluke, and we just happened to get extremely lucky on 2 boss fights that maybe we shouldn't have. This was not the case. We had a "come to Jesus" meeting with Lucifron and Magmadar, instead of them being nail-biters the entire way through. Only a few people stumbled during Luci (three, maybe) and Magmadar was much easier to keep under control with three hunters on Tranquilizing Shot duty. (And they were rewarded well for their efforts, as Magmadar dropped the Striker's Mark and Giantstalker's Leggings).
We marched all the way down to Gehennas for our first encounter with him. Kristynn laid out the battle plan, and we began. (Note to other Pods: When Rain of Fire starts to fall... FRACKING MOVE!!!1! That's all I'm sayin'...). Because of the lack of familiarity with the fight, we sorta fell flat of our faces in that episode, but we wore this particular Flamewalker down to 31% thereabouts. We were going to make another go of it, but the groups assigned to the smaller adds accidentally aggroed the guards and Gehennas, and they mopped the floor with that group. Not accustomed to looking to see whether or not I was in combat (I was rezzed by someone in the center group, and headed back to my spot), I retreated to where I was rezzed and accidently drug the rest of the group in combat by being halfway in between the two. Whoops. Check out my book, Noob Mistakes, and the Noobs That Make Them. I apologized vociferously to the group, should the error have been mine, but we also realized that Blizzard had modified the boss encounters to bring the entire raid party into combat when any members enter a fight, as to keep priests, etc from hanging out in the backfield and rezzing folks since they were still out of combat. Maybe it wasn't me, after all. That made me feel better, but I still made sure to bring it up. It was late, and we were already over time, a bit; so we called it a night, and vowed to bring the fight right back to these guys Saturday night.
And bring the fight, we did. With Magmadar dead, there was no respawn of the Core Hounds, so that was nice. Made clearing down to where we left off much easier. Here we go, Gehennas, Take Two. Guards go down nicely. Free Action Potion, FTW. Engage the boss, avoid curse and Rain of Fire. Watch ranged group in then distance get oblitterated by a pair of Molten Giants and Destroyers. WTF? It seems that in the heat of battle, somebody managed to wander backward into the aggro radius of two Molten Giants standing at the entrance to Garr's room.
"But Echuta," you might say, should you know the layout of this section of MC, "how is that even possible?"
Oh, it isn't. Dives said it best when he noted, "It's not even remotely f*cking possible." And yet one of our distinguished ranks managed to, nevertheless. This might raise another question as to how on earth I can sound so derisive about someone bringing in adds, when I just said that I might have brought the other group into combat when Gehennas was accidently aggroed. Here's the difference: I spoke up. Whomever this error was attributed to, they decided to weasel out of the responsibility of fessing up to their mistake. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have mattered, had they said something. "No worries," we would have said; "just be more careful next time. In fact, let's clear those mobs once we get our stuff back together and we won't have to worry about it." Which we did. And we took down Gehennas almost flawlessly afterward. What bothers me, though, is the symptom of a larger problem in that individual to where they wouldn't own up to a mistake. Granted, it means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. The boss was killed, and it was only about a 10 minute setback. It wasn't a big deal, but whomever the offending party might have been, it was a big enough deal to where keeping their mistake to themselves and hiding behind the anonymity of the moment was a much more attractive option to soothe their ego rather than just being transparent about their gaffe. Saying something about being responsible wouldn't have rezzed anyone that was dead, and it wouldn't take the sting away from otherwise being able to down Gehennas in one take, but it would have made a world of difference in terms of their strength of character. They walked up to that line and didn't have the fortitude to cross it. I might be being silly for even having the thought occur to me, but that sort of behavior strikes me as being almost insidious in nature. Our guild's culture is one of transparency and authenticity. We love you no matter what, so there's very little someone could do to genuinely garner our collective ire. Looking back, it is pretty funny, but I still find myself taking note of little character flaws like that, even when it's done anonymously.
Possibly the funniest commentary on the incident came from a good friend in the guild who had PM'ed me and said "I don't mind losing when we deserve to lose, but -FUCK!" No lie. Now, all of this being said, that's not to say that I don't have a theory at least to the class that was responsible for it. Oh no, I do. It could be absolutely wrong, and that's fine. This is an op-ed piece, not a newscast, so I can theorize all damned day on it. There was far too much action going on to scroll back through the combat log and see who was first hit by the giants, and proximity aggro wouldn't show up on the log anyway. Even then, it would hardly matter, as anyone that drew damage aggro upon seeing the giants come into groups 3-8 might have been trying to save that group (what a futile effort that would've been :D). Even money says it was a hunter, just because that's what hunters end up doing, many times. I can say this because I've played one. I can't tell you how many times I've been in LBRS, and a hunter in the group has backed up into the orcs just before Smolderweb, trying to get ranged distance to maximize their effectiveness. Those end in wipes, more often than not, too. That's not to say that it was a hunter that did that last night, but I can't think of any one class that would blindly back up like that, otherwise. (We were already onto Gehennas, too, so I don't even know why anyone would be in reverse, either, but it's just another layer to the conspiracy, at this point...).
On positive notes, Sabatons of Might dropped off Gehennas. Lochzar won the roll with a resounding 97. Grats, man. It's about time you won something first :p I didn't even address the fact that we took down Garr in a largely effortless manner. Evidently the addition of the Lucky Charms to the raid interface makes life much easier in that fight. Our warlocks pwned those Flamesworns and we are now 4 bosses in, on MC. Noteworthy loot off him was the Drillborer Disk which Vespasian won. I thought the poor guy was going to have a heart attack. There's no lie, that's one of the best-looking shields in the game. I think it might be cursed, though. He died somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 times after winning the roll. Another 97, too. Well done, Ves. I know that you've had your heart set on that one for quite some time. Across the two evenings we had something like 3-4 BoE Tier 1 pieces drop off trash mobs, and a goodly number of them off each of the 4 bosses, so every little bit makes a difference. I'll be interested to see how we do on Hakkar, this coming week. We've got 3 days in ZG, coming up next weekend. I think we can do him by Friday night, and move on to Edge of Madness/ Jin'do for Saturday. I'd sooner skip EoM, just for now, as that is highly aggravating, and at least from the warrior's perspective, the trinket leaves a bit to be desired. For our casters, Jin'do the Hexxer drops loot equivalent to Bloodlord Mandokir for the melee classes.
We marched all the way down to Gehennas for our first encounter with him. Kristynn laid out the battle plan, and we began. (Note to other Pods: When Rain of Fire starts to fall... FRACKING MOVE!!!1! That's all I'm sayin'...). Because of the lack of familiarity with the fight, we sorta fell flat of our faces in that episode, but we wore this particular Flamewalker down to 31% thereabouts. We were going to make another go of it, but the groups assigned to the smaller adds accidentally aggroed the guards and Gehennas, and they mopped the floor with that group. Not accustomed to looking to see whether or not I was in combat (I was rezzed by someone in the center group, and headed back to my spot), I retreated to where I was rezzed and accidently drug the rest of the group in combat by being halfway in between the two. Whoops. Check out my book, Noob Mistakes, and the Noobs That Make Them. I apologized vociferously to the group, should the error have been mine, but we also realized that Blizzard had modified the boss encounters to bring the entire raid party into combat when any members enter a fight, as to keep priests, etc from hanging out in the backfield and rezzing folks since they were still out of combat. Maybe it wasn't me, after all. That made me feel better, but I still made sure to bring it up. It was late, and we were already over time, a bit; so we called it a night, and vowed to bring the fight right back to these guys Saturday night.
And bring the fight, we did. With Magmadar dead, there was no respawn of the Core Hounds, so that was nice. Made clearing down to where we left off much easier. Here we go, Gehennas, Take Two. Guards go down nicely. Free Action Potion, FTW. Engage the boss, avoid curse and Rain of Fire. Watch ranged group in then distance get oblitterated by a pair of Molten Giants and Destroyers. WTF? It seems that in the heat of battle, somebody managed to wander backward into the aggro radius of two Molten Giants standing at the entrance to Garr's room.
"But Echuta," you might say, should you know the layout of this section of MC, "how is that even possible?"
Oh, it isn't. Dives said it best when he noted, "It's not even remotely f*cking possible." And yet one of our distinguished ranks managed to, nevertheless. This might raise another question as to how on earth I can sound so derisive about someone bringing in adds, when I just said that I might have brought the other group into combat when Gehennas was accidently aggroed. Here's the difference: I spoke up. Whomever this error was attributed to, they decided to weasel out of the responsibility of fessing up to their mistake. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have mattered, had they said something. "No worries," we would have said; "just be more careful next time. In fact, let's clear those mobs once we get our stuff back together and we won't have to worry about it." Which we did. And we took down Gehennas almost flawlessly afterward. What bothers me, though, is the symptom of a larger problem in that individual to where they wouldn't own up to a mistake. Granted, it means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. The boss was killed, and it was only about a 10 minute setback. It wasn't a big deal, but whomever the offending party might have been, it was a big enough deal to where keeping their mistake to themselves and hiding behind the anonymity of the moment was a much more attractive option to soothe their ego rather than just being transparent about their gaffe. Saying something about being responsible wouldn't have rezzed anyone that was dead, and it wouldn't take the sting away from otherwise being able to down Gehennas in one take, but it would have made a world of difference in terms of their strength of character. They walked up to that line and didn't have the fortitude to cross it. I might be being silly for even having the thought occur to me, but that sort of behavior strikes me as being almost insidious in nature. Our guild's culture is one of transparency and authenticity. We love you no matter what, so there's very little someone could do to genuinely garner our collective ire. Looking back, it is pretty funny, but I still find myself taking note of little character flaws like that, even when it's done anonymously.
Possibly the funniest commentary on the incident came from a good friend in the guild who had PM'ed me and said "I don't mind losing when we deserve to lose, but -FUCK!" No lie. Now, all of this being said, that's not to say that I don't have a theory at least to the class that was responsible for it. Oh no, I do. It could be absolutely wrong, and that's fine. This is an op-ed piece, not a newscast, so I can theorize all damned day on it. There was far too much action going on to scroll back through the combat log and see who was first hit by the giants, and proximity aggro wouldn't show up on the log anyway. Even then, it would hardly matter, as anyone that drew damage aggro upon seeing the giants come into groups 3-8 might have been trying to save that group (what a futile effort that would've been :D). Even money says it was a hunter, just because that's what hunters end up doing, many times. I can say this because I've played one. I can't tell you how many times I've been in LBRS, and a hunter in the group has backed up into the orcs just before Smolderweb, trying to get ranged distance to maximize their effectiveness. Those end in wipes, more often than not, too. That's not to say that it was a hunter that did that last night, but I can't think of any one class that would blindly back up like that, otherwise. (We were already onto Gehennas, too, so I don't even know why anyone would be in reverse, either, but it's just another layer to the conspiracy, at this point...).
On positive notes, Sabatons of Might dropped off Gehennas. Lochzar won the roll with a resounding 97. Grats, man. It's about time you won something first :p I didn't even address the fact that we took down Garr in a largely effortless manner. Evidently the addition of the Lucky Charms to the raid interface makes life much easier in that fight. Our warlocks pwned those Flamesworns and we are now 4 bosses in, on MC. Noteworthy loot off him was the Drillborer Disk which Vespasian won. I thought the poor guy was going to have a heart attack. There's no lie, that's one of the best-looking shields in the game. I think it might be cursed, though. He died somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 times after winning the roll. Another 97, too. Well done, Ves. I know that you've had your heart set on that one for quite some time. Across the two evenings we had something like 3-4 BoE Tier 1 pieces drop off trash mobs, and a goodly number of them off each of the 4 bosses, so every little bit makes a difference. I'll be interested to see how we do on Hakkar, this coming week. We've got 3 days in ZG, coming up next weekend. I think we can do him by Friday night, and move on to Edge of Madness/ Jin'do for Saturday. I'd sooner skip EoM, just for now, as that is highly aggravating, and at least from the warrior's perspective, the trinket leaves a bit to be desired. For our casters, Jin'do the Hexxer drops loot equivalent to Bloodlord Mandokir for the melee classes.
posted by Voice by Ben at 10:44 AM
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