First time there. Twenty minutes on trash. First attempt quick wipe. Second attempt, first channeler down. Continued improvements through finish. Last attempt, last channeler to 50%. Early Departure.
Next week, more improvement, tries at the cubes, and longer sentences.
After running raids against Prince Malchezar since sometime in the summer, Light’s Justice has not dropped for Steel Legion once. But last night it did. Doctoran was the happy tree druid who snagged it. Grats Doc. In other news King Maulgar has been one shotted for the last three weeks. Maulgar and his buddies are now on farm status. Gruul is not quite on farm but we do get him down. Monday we are looking towards Magtheridon. Cubes?
Just a short note on this week’s status: Maulgar down, still working on Gruul. Two Karazhan groups past Aran/Prince. Monday night we’ll hit Gruul and a secret mission.
Thursday started off with us clobbering the Bash’irs Landing Skyguard Event. There are some interesting things those vendors sell. We’ll save up our shards and try it again next Thursday which is looking like it might become Gruul’s night.
We one shotted King Maulgar and almost did the same for Gruul. We settled with a two shot.
Nice purples to some nice people. Not too bad. I think given our quick rampage through Gruul’s, last week was not an accident.
Then we headed up to Tempest Keep. Learned more about the pulls there. Got our leatherworker a nice recipe, and made an attempt at Void Reaver. 67%.
Last night’s raid took Steel Legion to many parts of the world, starting with Gruul’s Lair. We used the empty cave to really get to know the rock out croppings and develop good hiding spots. Something that a hectic raid environment does not allow.
About two weeks ago we made an attempt on the Blood Elf Capitol Faction Leader (“what’s his face”). We got him to 9% and met with some horde opposition. The horde did a great job of defending their city. Last night, however, we came prepared with more special forces. We met minimal resistance as we took “what’s his face” down very easily.
Our reward was 64 points of honor each and another mark of bravado to attach to the sides of our epic mounts. Thrall and the Undercity Queen are on deck. World PvP/PvE is fun.
Our agenda then took us to Tempest Keep. Void Reaver is next on our list of Boss acquisitions. According to our research, if you can get to Void Reaver, you can take Void Reaver. As they say reading and doing research helps a ton. Gaining experience with actual pulls is what matters and is necessary. The reading just speeds up the learning process.
We spent a great two hours learning the pulls and enjoying new content. 25 man raids is a whole new ball game, and the tight corridors of Tempest Keep provided nice challenges. Our rewards came in the form of learning yes, but also our first titanic random trash mob drop:
We’ll be getting more of those for sure. We made it to the point of pulling the first demon/blacksmith/robot pack out of Void Reaver’s room, before spawns started showing back up at the entrance to Tempest Keep. It was a good time to move on.
Steel Legion ended the night turning Karazhan into an empty instance by removing Maiden and Nightbane.
This week’s progress: Karazhan cleared, Gruul’s Lair cleared, Tempest Keep explored, some blood elf guy “what’s his face” killed, and many Legionnaires geared up. A very nice week indeed. What will next week bring? We shall see, we will make it happen.
We’ve been waiting for this one a long time. Our last major boss kill was nearly two months ago. We’ve gone through change, and strengthened our ranks. Incredibly. Week by week we’ve been farming Karazhan, gearing our crew up for this. Some weeks have shown more and some have shown less, but each hints progress. It was all put to the test this evening.
Many of our members are east coasters and they extended their days way past what is normal for them. We spent about an hour on our first set of attempts, a warm up if you will. Our best shot and a record up to that point was Gruul to 9%.
We repeated that same effort on the 3rd to last try. Something was not right. Something was not working. We were making some progress but following the same theme of tragic defeat. Our officers knew something was wrong but couldn’t pin it. Then one of our new members suggested a very different healer strat. We employed it. That’s the way we do things.
Even though we made our last attempt with 24/25 legionnaires and a bit short on dps, we plunged ahead, because we knew we were close.
With respawns imminent on our last attempt, we got him. At growth #11 everyone was still alive. At about 8% health nearly three quarters of us were still up and dps’ing. I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it. Had to concentrate. Had to avoid the cave ins. Had to keep the tank up.
And that was just me, one of many healers. The tank kept on blocking, the hateful strike bear kept at #2. The rogues kept their sharp blades gouging. The shadow priests kept their victim flayed. The locks used their dark powers to afflict Gruul with terrible energies. The hunters emptied their quivers. The intervene tanks took the hits when everyone else was silenced. Our moonkin and shammy beamed and totem’d Gruul into yesterday. And our mage, our mage lit his ass on fire.
These are the Legionnaires who overcame Gruul:
These are the steadfast folk of Steel Legion. These are the folk who refused to give in, who refused to yield to common wisdom. We persevere. We are the ones that will be here in the months to come, as we face new challenges, new terrors. And the professor plums of the day will be ours. Only to fuel our next effort.
We are the hotness.
We’ll be working on Gruul this week. A lot. That’s all for now.
So this evening, we needed to kill a few minutes. Gathered at Evergrove, we visited our friendly city of Darnassus (this time on purpose, thank you very much Salatay), and took the Gryph to Theramore. From there we journeyed cross country to Mulgore and visited the Tauren Capitol City. Nice place.
We looked around for a burger joint but only found Cairne Bloodhoof. He was a bit hostile so we had to BBQ him on the spot.
Back to Gruul’s after that, where we took King Maulgar’s lunch money. Later this week we’ll hit up Karazhan, where, we believe, they are having a sale on epics. One of the best nights in a few weeks!
Last week we ran two separate groups for Karazhan, due to some schedule conflicts, and being just short of class balance our two Karazhan groups were basically crippled on our last raiding night of the week. But saying that Steel Legion is crippled is like saying duct tape is useless.
We started off clearing and farming the Elemental plateau for primals, for our mats drive to Serpent Shrine Cavern. After horde and elementals were clear (about 2 minutes we got bored). We then noticed something shiny over in Halaa, so we cleared that. Most of us have never done the PvP objective in Halaa in an organized way. Much more fun and quicker to do it with guildies in a 25 man raid.
One last shot back to the Elemental plateau, then we were off to Tempest Keep. We are impatient for 25 man content and not adverse to steep learning curves. We learned and managed to clear the trash from the first six pack and the Marshal/Squire three pack pat.
Right about that time, a few members escaped from real life, and we headed to Karazhan, calling it a night at chess.
This week we have targeted which bosses and which people are heading into Karazhan in one super group. We are going to power through it rotating out nearly everyone, and spend half our raid days in Gruul’s. Our strats are flexible and changing. Our vision is not. We are heading into 25 man content for good.
The academic year has brought change to the guild. New members arriving, some taking a break. It was good to get back to two groups running Karazhan again. Monday we are heading for Gruul’s.