Al'ar down on Terenas

[TheDragoon]

Great job, everyone! We can definitely do better as phase 2 was a bit of an attrition battle, but we got through it and got our first kill. :)

[Tal]

Grats guys!

[Treesh]

Woooo! Go guys go!:w00t:

[VinnieJones]

Nice work folks, congarats!

[Mordekhuul]

Grats Lurkers!

Of the 3/4 TK we do, Al'ar is still the one that sometimes requires multiple pulls...and generally requires the most references to our favorite raiding quote:

Raiding has many challenges. Sometimes there's fire. You have to not be in the fire.

[Treesh]

Raiding has many challenges. Sometimes there's fire. You have to not be in the fire.

But, but Morde! It's fire! Fire pretty!

[Xame]

But Morde, we raid with 5 fire mages. This fight really sucks for our ranged dps.

[Mordekhuul]

But Morde, we raid with 5 fire mages. This fight really sucks for our ranged dps.

If you say the word "frost" near our mages, their noses turn up, they instinctively smash their blastwave button, and mumble something about "you're lucky we trained ice block even."

[Concillian]

If you say the word "frost" near our mages, their noses turn up, they instinctively smash their blastwave button, and mumble something about "you're lucky we trained ice block even."

Blastwave? Blasphemous PvP spec =P

(might be an inside joke, one of our highest DPS mage skipped the Pyro / Blastwave line in his talents, and there was a rather entertaining discussion about it on one of the ZA runs)

[Tuftears]

Congrats! How many [Delicious Hot Wings] did you get out of him?

[Icebird]

Congrats! Did you go through the excruciating Al'ar learning curve where you can do Phase 1 blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back only to wipe repeatedly during Phase 2? I found that was the most annoying part of the fight.

What's your next target - Vashj or Kael? Both are interesting and challenging fights in their own ways. Phase 2 of Vashj is more complicated and difficult than any single part of the Kael fight, but Kael requires a higher degree of concentration for a longer period of time since there is something different that can go wrong in every phase.

Chris

[Mordekhuul]

Congrats! Did you go through the excruciating Al'ar learning curve where you can do Phase 1 blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back only to wipe repeatedly during Phase 2? I found that was the most annoying part of the fight.

What's your next target - Vashj or Kael? Both are interesting and challenging fights in their own ways. Phase 2 of Vashj is more complicated and difficult than any single part of the Kael fight, but Kael requires a higher degree of concentration for a longer period of time since there is something different that can go wrong in every phase.

Chris

I much prefer fights like Karathress, where all the hard work and craziness is in the first minute or two, and it gets easier and easier as the fight goes on, until you are actually on Karathress and can put the blindfold on.

[Jester]

Congrats! Did you go through the excruciating Al'ar learning curve where you can do Phase 1 blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back only to wipe repeatedly during Phase 2? I found that was the most annoying part of the fight.

What's your next target - Vashj or Kael? Both are interesting and challenging fights in their own ways. Phase 2 of Vashj is more complicated and difficult than any single part of the Kael fight, but Kael requires a higher degree of concentration for a longer period of time since there is something different that can go wrong in every phase.

Chris

Well, Solarian is our next target for now. But if we get her down this week, then we'll probably try Kael, because he'll be the only thing left in the instance, after picking off Loot Reaver.

Long term, however, we will probably do Vashj before Kael, although this is all contingent on the patch not arriving for many a week.

-Jester

[Jester]

If you say the word "frost" near our mages, their noses turn up, they instinctively smash their blastwave button, and mumble something about "you're lucky we trained ice block even."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't all of those mages 100% frost back in "the day"?

:whistling:

-Jester

[Concillian]

Congrats! Did you go through the excruciating Al'ar learning curve where you can do Phase 1 blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back only to wipe repeatedly during Phase 2? I found that was the most annoying part of the fight.

I think on the Tuesday attempts they ironed out the Phase 1 issues (mostly learning how far up the ramps is safe for the tanks). Friday we had a couple wipes. 1 Phase 1 blunder, 2 Phase 2 wipes, and the kill. We had lost enough DPS in Phase 2 that we were less than 30s from enrage. Most of the Phase 2 issues were from awareness of adds when dying. Once we marked the tank who was wrangling the adds and assigned 'general areas' for tanking (adds on the glass, boss on the solid floor) things happened much smoother as people didn't go boom so much.

It's the kind of fight where Phase 1 is a total snooze-fest. Once you learn what to do it's virtually infinitely sustainable. Prince and Vashj come to mind as other fights like this where Phase 1 is the lull before the Phase 2 craziness.

What's your next target - Vashj or Kael? Both are interesting and challenging fights in their own ways. Phase 2 of Vashj is more complicated and difficult than any single part of the Kael fight, but Kael requires a higher degree of concentration for a longer period of time since there is something different that can go wrong in every phase.

I think we'll ask raiders for input here, but I see Kael easier to work on than Vashj just because it's 3 bosses instead of 6.

Our meager 6-7 hours per week on 25 man raids has generally left us little time on Vashj. In the two weeks where we spent all that time in SSC, a couple wipes to the "farm" bosses meant we had no more than 2-3 attempts at Vashj. Serious Vashj focus, would really also require a significant effort on trash efficiency and "farm boss" efficiency in order to get a solid 2-3 hour block of attempts.

Kael, on the other hand, is pretty easy to get a full raid night focused on without any real changes. It may be a more complex fight overall, but I think we have a good chance at definitely getting a solid 3 hour block of time on him alone.

But I think we'll be asking for guild input and see which big boss people are more willing to work on in earnest.

The extremely limited schedule really changes which becomes "easier". While Vashj is probably the easier of the fights, if you can only get a solid hour or 90 minutes a week, but can get 3 hours on Kael, I think Kael becomes the easier target.

[Guest]

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