The signs of addiction are starting to settle in. We really like running 25 man raids. We started doing Kara and farming for raptor mounts in ZG with our standbys, but its hard to resit the call of Gruul’s lair when you have 25 people on. So after clearing Curator, we headed over to Gruul’s lair for a couple of hours. We got the priest and warlock down and were making progress on the pulls before calling it good for the night.
Then we came back to Karazhan to set up shop in Aran’s library. So we are set for a Karazhan hat run on Saturday and clearage on Monday.
A new feature to the web site has been added. A weekly log of boss kills in Karazhan. This should serve a few purposes. It will be a record of our progress, and serve as a means of letting people know where we are from week to week, even if the current status in Karazhan isn’t news worthy any more.
Netherspie down on third attempt. Vemones’ cry of “this is the one” proved correct. Those of us who were keeping the gates of Karazhan clear of ghosts and horde had no doubt.
From there we went to BWL to get a warlock trinket from Razorgore. But first we had to do UBRS. Two parallel runs. Total time in UBRS with twenty 70s was 20 minutes. Nice. After BWL we went to Gruul’s Lair. The strats say its all in the first pull. We went with about 5 people short. But we actually learned the pull. The fight lasted about 90 seconds, but we made progress and for the first time since mid January, we raided together as a guild with everyone there. This is what we’ve been waiting months for. The day has arrived.
Three or four months ago we Legionnaires stood just inside the entrance to Karazhan wondering if we’d ever get past the first couple of bosses and how nice it would be to get some victory prizes. Often we’d have to cancel runs because not enough showed up.
Tonight as I write this, Karazhan has only Netherspite left in our saved instance. On Saturday we got him down to 6%. We had a great time in that room on Saturday. Finally the beams started making sense and people were getting the transitions down. We had lost some people early on, but it was manageable. Toward the end of the fight it really could have gone either way. Tomorrow when we face the phase dragon again, we’ll be armed with more experience and knowledge and we’ll have just as much fun.
There is a moment when surfers are paddling after a wave that it comes upon them. They are at the cusp. It takes only one more strong push and they catch it, riding it as far as it will take them.
This week is Steel Legion’s cusp moment. We have people willing and ready to do what it takes to learn fights, enjoying doing this for the sake of doing it, and placing the guild’s interest on equal footing with their own. I don’t think we’ve ever had so much fun in this guild. There isn’t another place I’d rather be in the game at this point.
Tomorrow we’ve got a damn good chance of clearing Karazhan completely. From that point we’ll all belong to a guild that has cleared Karazhan. Then we head towards more challenges and fun times in other instances. We’ll be farming Karazhan for a while to come. But that is a little bit ahead of us. For now one more strong push ahead and we ride the wave.
This week Vemones was promoted to the rank of officer. In Steel Legion this means that he has his own raid night and is in charge of everything from group makeup to the strategy of pulls, group morale, and recording DKP afterwards. Vemones’ run on Wednesday was intentionally meant for some of our newer members who had not received loot from the first couple of bosses in Karazhan yet. By all accounts it was a fun and successful night.
That preliminary run set us up for a mad dash to Aran’s library on Thursday. On the way Rofelo became the first Legionnaire to enjoy a set bonus from Tier 4 gear. Given our group makeup we decided to clear our Nightbane and the Maiden. It was fun to see a prot warrior in action doing the stance dance on Nightbane, solidly.
We have two more days now to hit Prince, Illhoof, and Netherspite. It would be great to get Netherspite down this week.
As we get more and more loot distributed to our ranks we inch closer to running two groups through Kara, and heading towards Gruul’s lair.
After four attempts, our first four attempts, Nightbane went down. We kept holding back on potions and other consumables because we were trying to get our fight down. Get the transitions from ground fight to airborne, avoid the scorched earth zones, etc. But it turned out on our fourth attempt it just came together. Below is a snapshot of the Nightbane Crew.
The raid had full support from our groups 3 and 4 Legionnaires while we were on the Master’s Terrace.
After this quick victory, which really had us shocked, we went higher up inside the tower and fought Netherspite. He took us to school and stole our lunch money!
Actually, we did nicely. Our best attempt on Netherspite was 48%. For those attempting this fight for the first few times take it from us, read the strats, sure, but just get in there and have fun a few times. The strats won’t make sense until you actually do the fight. To say that we learned a lot is an understatement. It’s good to have a goal for next week!
Can there be a top to all that? Yes. Our members top anything. We were able to get a bunch of people into Karazhan to see the new content, new fights for most. For some it was their first raiding experience. We sure are glad to have them. Next week is looking up already.
The news in short: Illhoof down.
The picture above shows the people in the room at the time of our victory over Illhoof. What it doesn’t show is the real team effort behind our victory. Nearly every 70 online at the time had been either waiting outside, facilitating summons to Karazhan, or clearing Horde, or just being ready to swap in. We also had a parallel run going in Heroic Shattered Halls to finish the summoning quest for Nightbane. It was completed just as we were finishing up our run.
This week there are only two bosses left in Karazhan, Nightbane and Netherspite. Monday we’re taking on Nightbane. We are very close to forming two raid groups for the week and are contemplating a run on Gruul’s in the very near future. The best part of this week, without a doubt, were the quality people we picked up as recruits. Sometimes with all the talk of bosses and loot its easy to forget what makes a guild strong.
But we don’t forget: The Legionnaires in our guild make us strong.
I am always truly amazed at what us Legionaires can do. Finally got a different boss on the Opera event, we were getting tired of Romeo and Juliet. Why can’t they just elope and stop showing up on that stage. The Big Bad Wolf was Big Bad Easy. As usual we stride forward in a extrodinary night through Karazhan and clear all the way to Shade of Aran in our first night. The amazing thing is that we killed Aran without any locks. Some guilds won’t even try to do that fight without at least 1 or 2 locks to banish those Hydroman wannabees.
This makes the Library home base for the rest of the runs this week, where we will surely get the Prince down. More than likely we will try some new bosses like that ugly two horn devil looking dude and his continuous supply of cow loving imps or Netherspite. Everyone should take the time and read up on Netherspite so we have a general idea of what to do.
DKP will be updated as soon as I can log in to the website, it will be before Saturday nights run with Ty.
The last week was not the brightest in Steel Legion History. But lots of progressive efforts begin with building the membership, player by player, epic by epic. You cannot stop the force that is the Steel Legion.
Last week’s Karazhan resulted in a plunge effort clearing up to our buddy the Curator. We skipped ahead and did the Chess event, but could not even clear Aran that week. Despondent? No way. We had people fresh to the instance, rotated several people in and Steel Legion Minions grow stronger.
We started off this week’s Karazhan runs with a fun farming run for mats and rep. Several first time Kara members bumped up their rep from neutral to friendly. Soon they’ll regularly be paying the blacksmith for repairs. We also knocked out the Huntsman for good measure. Two good epic upgrades for first time members. Not a bad way to start the week.
We also grabbed a bunch of soul essences. Our clothies will be happy, we already have the complete Soul Cloth recipe set in our guild now.
Thursday we’ll press ahead. Goal Shade.
Have a happy 4th of July!
If you’ve had difficulty getting to these pages lately you are not alone. The current status of our website’s connectivity is less than stable. But that will change in about a week for the better.
In a filing under the important news section Steel Legion took the Prince down again for the second time two weeks ago. We had some decent attempts at Illhoof and are getting up to speed on that. No new boss kills as of yet, but that will happen. Soon.