The Eye « Steel Legion

July 24, 2008

25 Hands of A’dal

Posts here came to a bit of a standstill lately. You see, we were quite busy. We’ve been really concentrating on downing Kael’thas and moving ahead, somewhat legitimately by old standards anyway, into Hyjal and Black Temple content.

Raiders know the rush of a first boss take down. One as Epic as the Kael’thas leads to a longer and more heroic struggle, but ultimately to a more epic victory. We Legionnaires live for moments such as this.

During the several attempts on the Lord of the Blood Elves, we faced problem and trial, triumphing over them, only to face a more complicated and trying task. But we kept at it, like some relentless machine, slowly making progress. For those that have ever read about the fight, watched a video of it, and certainly those who have already pioneered the way months ago, you will know that there are so many things that can go wrong with this encounter. But there is only one way to get passed it, and that is maintaining total concentration, trusting in your guild mates, and in turn never letting them down.

We’ve also been working on our organization in the background too. It’s not just being there, but being there in a ready state that counts. It’s not just the 25 raiders who were there on this particular evening, but the ones who were on standby and those who pitched in over the past few weeks.

This all resulted in the frenzied cries of victory in vent as Kael slipped past 5%. Even though we had started losing people we kept our discipline up. At 1% we lost our back up tank, and only had a handful of healers and a few dps’rs standing. When he finally crumpled to the floor it was unbelievable. I now have a glimpse of what the players on the ’80 U.S. Olympic hockey team must have felt like. You raiding nerds know exactly what I am talking about.

This is a milestone for us. We have now cleared all of the content up through tier 5. We will linger on these grounds where we have claimed victory for a few weeks longer, giving our entire roster a chance at some loot and a time to finish quests. But we have already started focusing back on Hyjal and inside Black Temple. Our goal is getting Illidan before the WotLK expansion hits the servers.

That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

July 11, 2008

Working on Kael

Just News,The Eye — Kawaihae

First advisor phase, weapons phase, second advisor phase. We’ve worked on Kael slightly in his awakening phase but getting the second advisor phase down is really what we’re working on right now.

This is familiar territory: Learning the fight, incrementally, and seeing visible progress. We’ll see where we are by the end of the week.

May 5, 2008

Solarian: Cupcake? Or Cake Walk?

Boss Kills,The Eye — Kawaihae

After taking her loot the first night we had a full crew, the question running through our minds is, “Why did we take so long to get here?”.

Well the answer is that Leotheras held us up for way too long. But along the way, we built up a lot of good gear. As we face the weeks ahead, Tempest Keep: Al’ar, Void Reaver, and Solarian will most likely become a one night show. We will clear SSC at least up to Leo on another night, Leaving Karathress and maybe Tidewalker for another day of the week.

That’s two more nights to work on new content. We’ll keep chipping away at Mt. Hyjal, but soon, very soon, we’ll begin focusing our efforts on Lady Vashj and Kael´thas Sunstrider.

May 2, 2008

Fire Pigeon Roasted

Boss Kills,The Eye — Kawaihae

On our second serious series of attempts on Al’ar (ever, just one set was needed this evening), we brought our count in Tempest Keep to 2/4. From our last attempt we had a few things to improve upon. We identified them, and fixed’em. Job done.

We rounded out the night by clearing Void Reaver again. It sure is nice to gear up guildies with three shoulders rather than two.

Sunday afternoon we look forward to attempts on Solarion.

April 28, 2008

Al’ar Well into Second Phase

The Eye — Kawaihae

Yesterday we had our first real shot at Al’ar. It was a nice fun, new fight. We quickly cleared through the first phase of the encounter and began refining our technique on his rebirth phase. Our best attempt landed us at 61%. We are looking forward to more. Soon.

December 10, 2007

Steel Legion on Void Reaver: Threat Neutralized.

Boss Kills,The Eye — Kawaihae

On our third attempt of the evening Void Reaver became surplus material. On the way we deployed some new strats that allowed us to get to the fight in about 80 minutes. Following tradition, we had people outside the instance lending support, in some cases swapping whole groups out in Al’ar’s room and a few more fine tuning swaps right in the Crucible.

It was exciting to see how we were just slightly ahead of schedule. The unofficial timer had us at 9 minutes and 40 something seconds for the kill. Last week, we were three minutes short. We learn, and we learn quickly. This was a great way to end the raid week.

Wednesday brings new opportunity. We’ll be looking to dredge up Lurker below and put the kaibosh on Hydross in Serpent Shrine Caverns.

December 4, 2007

Working on Void Reaver Again, Have Halazzi in Sights

Just News,The Eye,Zul'Aman — Kawaihae

So our return to Tempest Keep was fun. The bottom line is that we left Void Reaver standing at 29%. With that rate of dps, we were about 3 minutes behind schedule. The fight ended with him enraging. We did improve rapidly through the night; it takes a few times of fighting VR to get to recognize how to avoid the arcane bombs. We can survive, we just have to avoid those early deaths and pick up the damage. We are within striking distance.

Perhaps the best part of the evening was when two of our raid members were out at the meeting stone trying to summon a replacement. They met grievous deaths at the hands of some Horde transfer guild. Reports were that there were about 20+ members out there. I would imagine that they were doing Tempest Keep also.

The call was issued, and answered by the remaining 23 or so Legionnaires in the instance. We flew out to settle the score.

Zheus made it to the ground first and aimed shot one of their summoners. He was peppered with return fire but with 2 healers backing him up, Zheus did not go down. That brief respite allowed the rest of our forces to land and completely dominate the scene. UNIVERSA DOMINION. My screen was filled with kill notes. In a short span of 20 seconds or so, I had accrued 36 honor kills. Some of us had about 44 from repeats. I was killed once near the end. The majority of us never died. Maybe the horde will learn not to mess with Steel Legion near our meeting stones.

Or maybe, we’ll just have to take them to school again.

We finished off the night by working on the Troll boss Halazzi. I think we got him just past his third separation phase. Something like 22% overall. We have some fine tuning to do on that fight.

The week ahead looks good.