Tier 0.5

[Professor Frink]

That means, assuming a perfect run, we could do it in 39 minues. I don't think a group just in blues can do it as fast as we. Well I'd say try it for yourself and report your run.
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This morning was what I would estimate was my 10th try. (all pugs)

The group wasn't exactly just in blues, but fairly close:

A warrior on the quest. I belive he was in mixed blues, but i don't remember, I was mostly worried about the dps.

Me (on the quest), a priest in 3 virtuous + 5 lt. commander's (blue) with a benediction, other gear was generic 5 man dungeon-quality.

A rogue on the quest with gear from ubrs and a full dungeon set (3 upgrades of course). Good blue weapons and knew how to go all out.

A fire mage in partial MC gear, not on quest

a hunter with blues and an incomplete T0 set, not on the quest.

We followed what is on our server the conventional farm run path: nerub, backtrack, get to baroness and pull any nearby groups that we'll pull moving forward, make sure everyone blows cooldowns on fears, pull baroness, go to maleki, skip magistrate, kill right group and get the gate closed--we didn't have any wipe recovery so we couldn't do the death run from maleki to gate.

Our first run we had killed maleki only a little behind schedule. Baroness in particular was slow, 3 possessions, as the tank couldn't get his intimidating shout off before he was possessed and used it, but forunatley no adds. Later, someone backed up into the group of thuzadin casters to the left of maleki's tower (looking at him) during another pull, wiping us. Twice. After that we proceeded as a practice run, the prisoner dying more than halfway into the abomination event. 10 minutes later, the baron died, and we reckoned that accounting for the double-wipe and the fact that you only have to wake the baron in time to win, not kill him, we figured we would have failed anyway, but as a matter of seconds.

We were group looting bosses (fast enough that I didn't have to insist on no-loot, which was how i'd been doing most of my pugs till then), and skipping loot on trash, but on the second run we got incredibly lucky and one of the elites before the gate that starts the timer dropped a book of prayer of shadow protection, which i needed, learned, and used the rest of the run. Things were proceeding more smoothly and faster than before in general, until in the tunnel between baroness and maleki our MT reported on TS that his screen had frozen. After about 30 seconds of delay, we resumed pulling trash with 4 as he rebooted his machine and reconnected right before we needed to pull maleki's guards. Pulling quickly but with more careful grouping, we avioded any extra pulls beyond an unavoidable trapped crate, and got the gate closed sometime before the 10 minute warning. Abom event went well, usually one would wander in and get shacked while the one before it was at about 50%. Skelleton charge ended with 3 minutes on the debuff, while wating for the door to open we agreed that baron would be pulled with 3-5 seconds on the debuff in whatever shape we were left in. Managed an extremely aggressive AoE fight against the four skeletons, charging them where they stood while the mage and hunter AoEd, the warrior and rogue took down one at a time, and i offtanked the others and somehow managed to not lose anybody. Scrambling in I finally got to see a non-empty cage, and sat down near dead and OOM for drinking + eating with ~25s on the debuff.

Charged at 5s, managed to finish drinking before any emergencies or getting dragged into combat, baron fight went smoothly and wasn't terribly close. Dropped legs, which the hunter needed anyway, and the cage was opened and I got my ysida freed, which you turn in to her for a bag of potions and an amulet to deliver to her husband's ghost.

Over teamspeak, I heard the strong texas accent of the the MT, informing us that he needed a beer.

We killed the magistrate before portaling to IF to brag. He didn't drop anything interesting.

-- frink