Arysh taking a stroll through Qeynos Harbor, happened across another traveler

When I see a guide wandering around the Shattered Lands, I always remember when I had applied to be a guide, and wonder why I decided against it. In the end I think it was just my general love of the game that stopped me from going any further with it. While I love being able to enhance someone else’ game play through the guide program specifically with their contests and rp events, I just found it much more fulfilling if I delved into the game from a players perspective (though I am well aware of the fact that guides are also regular players). It’s great to have a volunteer program like this though.

Yesterday was raids. We didn’t exactly have our core group (which is an ever-present issue these days) so we headed off to Lyceum. No deaths for Misako (the mystic) which was nice. The zone was completed in barely over an hour, and everyone did fantastic. We decided to give Freethinkers Hideout another run. If you remember my previous posts, we’ve had issues with this zone from the start, and yesterday was no different. We downed the first two mobs with little difficulty, though I still have to swap out for my illusionist for the second battle which sort of peeves me because it is a fight that drops class set pieces, and that means my mains class piece will never drop. The warden forearms fell none the less. We wiped a few times on the second last guy like we always do, at the exact same spots that we always do (right after the second mem wipe and reflect hits) and called it a night.

I feel bad for wanting progression. I shouldn’t though, right? I mean, we all pay our monthly fees and want specific things out of the game. I love this guild but there are days when I long to be able to progress some. People have mentioned to me (I won’t name names here, but you all know who I’m talking about if you’re in my guild) that “we” are trying to make The Inquisition into some “uber” raid guild. Which ‘we’ are not. If “we” wanted to be in an “uber” raid guild, “we” would be. You’ll have to forgive my use of quotes around all that stuff.

So. I have no idea what direction I’m headed in game. I have no idea what goals I want to set, or what I want to do. More often then not I’m just left feeling flustered and frustrated. I doubt my quality of playing, and my ability to know my class. Better then the average person? Sure, but there are lots of very incredible players out there.

Sorry for yet another drab post, here’s hoping I stop being so gloomy real soon! Maybe a quest walk through or two will finally make their way to a post.

Little hard to see since it’s shrunk, but besides the blocky persona window in the way, that’s my typical UI

Last night was Deathtoll and boy was I nervous. Yes, I’ve done the zone numerous times over the course of the past two years, but I had never raided with Misako before. Not even so much as Labs. It was also my first raid as a mystic, and there was lots for me to pay attention to. Thankfully with some suggestions from Thunderwalker, I didn’t mess up too badly. It will certainly take some time to get used to healing with her vs. the other healers I have. Mystics have a lot of temporary spells to keep track of, aside from their pet, their stunning ward (which I rarely used), bolster, and torpor… the raid was a blur for the most part. It was fun though. No deaths. Well, one death because we accidentally stepped on a second group of worms and I had wards up, other then that though, no deaths. Probably one of the smoothest DT runs I’ve ever done with this guild. We’ve moved some people around in groups, and I love it. We’ll be diving back into EoF shortly and I’m looking forward to that.

As you can tell by my UI pictured above, I have a lot on the screens. Every character is pretty much the same. The persona window is blocking a lot of the battle or else you’d be able to tell that I have a lot of room to see things. I have 4 chat windows, the ones to the left are tells, group, raid, guild, and then combat, the ones to the right, are npc says and then channels. I also have 7-8 hotkey bars up at any given time depending on the character. I use profit reborn UI, best that I’ve found and it lets me see everything I need to see, like in combat power regen, and specifics about my attacks.

I’m trying to get Goudia to level 30 weaponsmith. I hate having to grind through the 20’s. Number one the +durability buttons are going to turn grey and make it impossible for me to reach pristine. Number two, it’s just drab and boring. I’m also out of vitality, so I’m trying to grind through the levels doing writs which of course just take longer. She’s sitting at 26 right now, so just 4 more levels to work through. On the plus side, the little baby items I’m making seem to sell well. It will be nice to be able to make weapons.

Other then that, things are going well. Guild drama has slowed, Kilanna is away for a few more days (thoughts are with you again girlie). Guild leader and his wife as well as a few others are going to be taking vacations shortly, so raids may be a little slowed. I’m looking to get into more rp, I miss it since the festival of unity a few months back. I’m eager to get Faydai leveled, and then maybe my troubador or ranger. I’d like to see all 3 hit level 70 before RoK comes out. Not sure how feasible that is though. I suppose I could just grind every day, but that’s going to get drab really fast. Misako needs to start / work on the Sword of Destiny, as well as her Claymore. She still needs to speak as a dragon, which I’ll probably get done sunday or monday, not sure yet. Shadowgeist has been having a lot of fun on his necromancer, think he’s close to 45 now. Lader has been playing his defiler, for some reason I just can’t see him as a healer. Lots of interesting changes coming as far as the loot system and drop system in game, looking forward to that. They patched yesterday for 2 hours but nothing was said in update notes, so I don’t even know what it was for, and then today servers are down again. I know it’s quite frequent with all the changes they’ve been adding to have these down times, but people are starting to get slightly cranky. I’d MUCH rather have the servers down for 1-2 hours every day (except weekends) then go through what WoW does though, which is 8-9 hour patches every Tuesday. It’s been that way since release.

More chattering later as always!

Anyone remember Snow Form? It’s the item from Frostfell that lets you turn into a delightful snowperson

Dasie was looking for ways to cool off this summer in Freeport, so I have her running around in true snow woman form. As long as the snow is not yellow, it’s all good. Last night was Labs, went just fine. Misako managed to get a (very small) upgrade, some relic chain gloves. She was wearing leather ones, so even though it only gave her one more power, the mitigation boost was nice. They would have just rotted anyhow. Misako is now sitting at 6.9k self buffed power, which I love. She’s got 600 more then Dasie, who is pretty well geared and adorned.

Last night I decided to remove all of my alts from The Inquisition, and put them in a smaller / crafter orientated guild with a friend. Number one it gives me something to level up since Inquisition is level 60 and has been for quite some time, and number two, it gives me bank spaces to oohh and ahh over. Anyone who’s ever had their own guild before knows how exciting it can be to be able to have it all to yourself and not crammed full of useless crap. It’s nice to have a place to store common rares between characters, as well as L&L pieces, and adornment pieces. Now the guild just needs a few levels to get past the very minimal bank space it has currently.

SoE also was praised from one end of the server (Antonia Bayle, for those who have no idea what server I’m on) as they implemented a spam filter. I LOVE this feature, I must admit. I have gotten NO spam tells at all since they’ve added it. I have them filtered off to my combat chat window, just incase it happens to read something as spam that is not spam. It basically sets the channel as a link, any you have to click “view” if you actually want to read the spam link. Everyone of course was being stupid about it though and testing out exactly what you have to say / do in order to get added to this “spam” channel. So I no longer have to have my characters flagged as /role or /anon in order to prevent the mass tells from flying through. Yes, I love it. I have to admit that SoE has been doing some pretty amazing things in game lately. I have heard no one speaking ill of it compared to what used to be said out there. I have no idea if their player base is growing at all, but I would assume that it is. I know my server at least is very well populated, though that could be because it’s a role play preferred server, and the other one (Lucan D’Lere, which I of course moved from) is quite under populated. There is rumor that when RoK comes out a few servers will merge — and that new servers will open up, much like WoW does every few months. This entices new players to try out the game on a server that is not already inflated as far as the economy goes. They’d probably prevent anyone from transferring to the new server until things were stable and some time had passed, so as to not give players an advantage over the newer population. Personally, I think this method works great, though I will not be starting over on a new server any time soon that’s for sure. I have invested countless hours in the characters I already have.

Speaking of which, I made a new warden last night. I don’t imagine I’ll be playing her any time soon, but I did not want to betray my fury back to a warden, so this solution is far easier. She’s an iksar, though that may change, we’ll have to see.

Tonight in guild is apparently “training” for raids, which I think is sort of silly and sort of needed. I wish it were on a day we had raids, because Wednesday is like my “day off” from that sort of thing, but we’ll just see how it goes. The parses (healer at least) looked amazing last night. I want them to look that way every single night. It was main tank defiler on top (as it should be) off tank defiler (expected, since they use wards), main tank warden, main tank templar, off tank inquisitor, mage group templar, and fury in the 4th group. I don’t care what order things are in but certain groups and certain classes are ahead of others (typically). Of course gear plays some roll and how well the healer plays is a huge portion, but again, the heal parse last night… I want to see that every time we raid.

Dasie’s spell cast is 106% so she casts over 100% faster then she would typically cast. Now that rocks.

Saturday raids are typically a mish mash of our “regular” raiders and a few others who can only make weekend raids. So we ease up and this weekend was no different, we decided to do LoA and HoS (that’s Lyceum and Halls for those who are unfamiliar with the acronyms). I’m typically in the melee / off tank group due to my dps buffs + dirge dps buffs + necromancer who can life burn a whole lot easier with two healers keeping him up. My partner in crime used to be Thunderwalker, who played a mystic, but is now Sahvek, who’s a defiler. Both are great healers and I trust them completely on our raids. Shaman have a spell called alacrity (single target) that stacks with my divine retribution, and as you can see from the image on the post, it’s dang nice. Having a 106% spell cast for 30 seconds on an inquisitor is amazing. I typically hit DR when the necromancer is about to life burn, so that me and Sahvek can keep him up easier. I also have my hp buff on him so that he has more hp to burn away. Dasie may not be the most “uber” inquisitor out there, but she’s still a lot of fun to play, especially when I have great people in her company.

The raids were wonderful. I wish, really really really wish, that they were consistent. That’s about my only qualm. We died twice between the two zones, once due to a weird fear issue that pulled some named from a few rooms over some how, and once to Venekor who decided it would be cute if he punted our main tank directly into the statues that surround his room, instead of into the back corner with us like he typically does (or she? I have no idea, I try not to look that close to dragon parts).

Dasie got a new wrist piece, which means I really just want one more upgrade for her (other wrist) and I’m hoping maybe I just get DT access for that. Aside from Claymore, and the fabled version of her hammer, I have nothing else that I want, well, maybe a new breast piece. Nothing besides that though. I REALLY want to try to farm her set gear, having 6 out of the 7 pieces will warrent her another 33% spell cast that’s static. With her 14% from aa, as well as 5% reduction from her chel’drak ring, she’s pretty dang set. I know she’s not all uber, but considering I hadn’t played this character in a very long time and I’ve been trying to get her caught up for a bit now, she’s done very very well.

Kilanna is back! I’m so excited about that. I have missed her oodles, it’s funny how used to talking to someone you can get even if it’s just on line. She is the voice of sanity in the early mornings when I’m ranting away about something. Gothun was promoted to member in The Inquisition, always nice to see. Other then that, things are going the same as always. Deciding which alt I should work up next. I need to find myself a whole lot of rough pearls too before I can start betraying the defiler.

A vision into the future rewards this very pretty ring after you kill Chel’Drak, now Dasie, Stargrace, and Arysh each have theirs

Dasie was so far behind her Mystic Lake quests at the beginning of this week, I had really thought she’d be getting her ring next week. However, karma is nice some days and she ended up getting it last night. I managed to catch her up (with some help) to the Nizara portion of the quest. Then a group of guildies were doing it and two of them logged off early, they happened to be the main tank and the defiler, their templar also left. So as I mentioned in a previous post, me and a few other guildies took their spot and completed the zone. There were quite a few of us who needed the updates. Since Chel’Drak was cancelled on Tuesday due to quite a few essential people missing, we scheduled it for last night.

We did a portion of Deathtoll first, granted some folks were unhappy that we also skipped two of the named, the splitting globule one as well as cruor. We did it to save time I suppose, though I can understand their frustration. Especially since it took us 4 (real) pulls to down Chel’Drak. Disappointing after we got him down the first pull the week before. I don’t understand the lack of consistency. People should be doing the exact same things every time we raid, or so you’d think. The first wipe was not exactly anyone’s fault. for some reason again when we zoned in we found Chel’Drak on top of us, none of the trash spawned in the long hallway, and just happily died. The next few wipes were just silly really. The main tank was dropping far more then he should have been. People not paying attention. I burned through my power roots (I LOVE those house plants that give roots.. having 6 roots that give you between 10% and 22% power back with a very small re-cast timer is amazing) and knew there’d be no way we could down him if some groups had no power regen. So we added some to the raid, switched groups around, and finally had a flawless pull (and kill). There’s still a lot of drama and issues going on in the guild which I know is quite common for any guild, but I really hope they dissipate some time soon. It makes for a very uncomfortable playing situation, for a simple game that we all pay to play.

So Dasie has her pretty ring, the 3rd character I’ve taken through that quest line. Next she’ll need to work on her Claymore. Since she already has MoA, and SoD, I’m not planning on doing Godking with her — though she does have the quest and is almost finished it, so we’ll see how that goes. If I can get claymore and DT access done for her I’ll be happy. I’d like them done before RoK comes out, if I pushed claymore I know I could complete it in the next two weeks, but I doubt I’ll be pushing for it. I’m finally getting her geared up to where I’d like her to be. She needs two bracelet upgrades (hence why I’d really like to get DT access done on her) and then most of her gear will be at least fairly nice. She could also stand a new breastplate as well, hers is not horrible, but it’s not the best.

Today it’s nice and wet and raining out. I’m contemplating just quietly crafting. Goudia is going to buy a new home in Neriak, so then I’ll own a 5-room in Qeynos, Freeport, and Neriak. The rent is actually not that bad at all, since I can work the status on the other homes down to 0 easily enough, and the homes are about 20g each in rent (the Qeynos and Freeport ones at least) the Neriak one is barely even 7g if I remember correctly. Addicted? Sure why not. Need to have some place to put all those L&L trophies and HQ’s.

This quaint little home in Rivervale may not be so far away to visit in the near future..

Littlebyte, who is co-guild leader of my guild, pointed out this amazing post found on eqtraders, about the new housing items that they’re going to be adding with GU37. The last update is barely out the door yet and already they’re talking about what’s going on with the next one. I love it. I realize a lot of people gripe and complain that there’s so much else that needs to be done and fixed with the game first, however. The game has departments for all of that, and I’m glad to see that the housing / furniture item department is getting some loving. Whether people want to admit it or not, it’s a huge portion of this game, just take a peek over at the Norrathian Homeshow to see how busy.

Apparently from the article there are at least two dozen new house items making their way into the game, taken from the Rivervale zone. The image posted shows some bread pans, muffin tins, comfortable chairs, and two types of stoves. So I’m thinking that they may also include these beds and / or lights in the image above. We’ll have to see, only so many of the items are being released at a time on eqtraders so I’ll have to check back for updates. None the less I was pretty dang pleased to see it.

I was informed about the new furniture during our Deathtoll raid last night. It went very well, not a single death for Dasie and for once Tarinax decided to leave her alone and not swipe at her during the final fight. On an added bonus, we attempted (and defeated) Cruor, who is a huge snake that likes to be mean to people. We did have to use our AoE avoidance signets and blade dance, but since it was our first attempt, it was pretty nice. We had a few issues with the splitting drake still but we didn’t wipe, just trained it off once the MT went down. Did I mention we only had three groups for the majority of it? It was nice. I’m still working with the healers and trying to get everything sorted out where they’re concerned, but it’s not going too badly. I’ve set up a healer channel for us to all use and communicate with one another. Lets me ask who needs heal crit potions and who needs shards and hearts, and just to gripe about things if they’re not going well. It’s not heavily used yet, but over time people will get used to it. I have the regular healers in there each raid. If we need a specific strat, or we need people healing specific people outside of their group, that’s where I tell them.

Of course the day would not be complete with some sort of guild drama. I’ve seen other posts about cliques and guild issues, that’s always going to be present pretty much any time you have a group of people all massed together. Not everyone is going to get along. Doesn’t mean I can’t keep wishing and hoping for it though!

Yesterday was another one of those frantic quiet days.. if that makes any sense at all. First of all, happy 4th of July for those of you who are from the states. Canada celebrated on the 1st of course, fire works and what have you. Hope everyone who has the day off is enjoying it.

I moved (tried) Misako to Labs incase any spare gear ended up dropping that was just going to get transmuted. Because we work on a DKP system (which is good and bad) I am careful about what I bid on. If something is only a slight upgrade, I won’t bid on it if I know there is something better out there or something I want more. So when the fabled inquisitor hat dropped, I declined. Dasie is wearing her legendary class hat, and if I can manage to some how get 6/7 pieces to it, she’ll have 33% reduced spell cast timers, which is simply amazing for any healer (and specific to templar / inquis legendary class gear). Of course I really don’t have my hopes on it since I doubt I’ll ever manage to get them (I still need the Bp (unrest) the legs (cmm), the gloves (Kaladim ring event) and shoes (obelisk of blight). I could possibly manage all of them if I dedicated myself to it, but there is so much other stuff ongoing that it’s hard, and I spend a lot of my time helping out everyone else.

So we did labs, smooth run. Three groups, low on dps. It was alright though. Vyemm dropped a 2h hammer that I decided to pick up for Dasie. Self buffed she’s at 87 haste, 47 DPS with 100% melee crit chance, and 20% double attack. I’ve also started spec’ing her down the battle cleric EoF lines because there’s just nothing else that I’m interested in. She’s already got the +5% to her spells which is the only “heal” line she has, and she’s also got the EoF line that triggers verdict at the proper time so that she doesn’t have to do it by hand and try to time it. Basically what the battle cleric line does, is provide an alternative means for her to dps. Each one of her dps spells turn into a CA (combat art) and is used in melee range. They also have far shorter cast timers then the actual spells, and since she has 100% melee crit, they always crit. It’s nice. Now, I am not typically a dps’ing healer. Not on important raids at all. But when I am solo’ing, it’s very nice. Yaulp of course helps out a great deal too.

After Labs, we headed to Chel’Drak. I had my doubts, I must say. Pleasantly surprised when we killed him on the first pull, no deaths at all. Now if only he’d drop some of his nicer gear. We’ve seen the plate gloves three times now, the chain shoulders twice, and the sword twice. Some are aching for the dagger, he’s also got a nice ring, earring, and some amazing tank pants. Each time we down him he drops two fabled + a master. The co-ordination this time around was much nicer. We also had three bards, it made a difference. Of course the sort of class adds we have up also plays a roll, we had 1 warrior, 1 acolyte, the rest were mages and thieves. Much easier to burn those down. For the first time in quite some time Dasie was NOT out of power on this fight. In fact she was at about half power (yes, I did use my + power signet and root). She also used her miracle that gave 10% of the grp’s health back every 6 seconds for 1 minute. It made a total of 7% of her over all heals, which is a huge amount in a fight that lasts that long for a spell that only lasts a minute. I love Tunare. I think I’m lucky to have been able to betray her after she was already worshipping, because there really is no evil aligned deity that compares.

Tonight is an off night, I’m sure power leveling some alts / guildies will be in there. I hope tomorrow’s raids have the same sort of people signed up that we had today. Since I’m head of the healer classes now, I’ve been trying to make things easier on them, letting them know what we need for specific fights and what they need to be doing, if we’ve got to heal through the mob, what dot’s are going to be going off, and that sort of thing. Enjoying myself quite a bit, hope it keeps up. Would still love to see some solid progress, but it will come with time.

The AA information on the left hand side is for Dasie, who’s sitting at 66 right now, and on the right, Stargrace who is at 100. I just wanted to see where the majority of their points came from. Dasie hit 50 before any aa were in game, so she never got an opportunity to do any of the lower level stuff for it. Stargrace on the other hand, was created when DoF and KoS were both already out. Dasie is the lowest of my characters as far as aa’s are concerned, I’ve rarely ever gotten a chance to play her, she’s never been needed. It gives me a goal at least though and something to do. Dasie is also a 70 jeweler, which is always nice. I’m going to make her a tinkerer since Stargrace already is one, who wouldn’t want two.

The guild leader left for a short vacation on Thursday after raids, Friday was a tentative raid to work on the arcanists signets quest line from Loping Plains. You know the set, that gives a VERY nice proc against vampires. I had horrible thunderstorms, so I actually had to leave part way through for a brief period, and didn’t want people to have to wait on me, so I was left behind. Understandable though, I’ll complete it another time. It’s really a very great proc to have on raids. It was a small group but we did manage to get our off tank the cloak that proc’s hate. Not that he needs much more hate, he’s a great off tank.

Saturday (again with no guild leader nor his wife which means no MT and no MT defiler.. and our MT templar is also on vacation..) we were scheduled to do LoA but were cautious about it, missing so many people. I was asked to play my inquisitor in the main tank group because the templar who typically raids with us is on vacation. Now. Dasie does not have masters of her heals, and she’s slightly under-geared, but that is only a portion of how well a player does. I parsed very well on the heals for the night, and aside from some difficulty from the eyeball in the zone who spawns tatter tots (we wiped x2 and got him on the 3rd) the zone was cake. Impressive since we had three groups and so many missing. I had a blast playing Dasie. I’m really hoping that I get to keep her as my main, I have to talk to the guild leader when they get back and see how viable that would be. I know everyone loves having a constant illusionist (or two, since we have two) around, but I am a healer at heart and I hope I proved that with my game play the past little while.

Tonight I’ve got a BBQ to head to so not much time for playing, an off night since it’s Sunday. Monday is an off night as well, though a courts run was planned too few people signed up. Tuesday I believe we’re doing labs and Chel’Drak again, but I could be wrong. We’ll see how it goes. In game it’s your typical Sunday, people complaining on various channels and all the rest. The Festival of Unity ended yesterday with a parade, but I didn’t get to go to it because of raids. I know there’s a balance between role play and raiding out there, but it sucks that I couldn’t go to the event. One of the main reasons why I enjoy the 3 raids a week that we host right now as opposed to joining the other guilds who were interested in me who all raid 7 days a week. Just because I’m on frequently doesn’t mean I want to spend all of it raiding.

Dasie, playing the part of an inquisitor, all done up as a vampire

I used to be able to say that there was one character I had never betrayed, my very first character on EQII in fact, my templar. However, that’s changed, not a bad thing! I decided I wanted to try an inquisitor for a few reasons. Number one, I really wasn’t playing the templar at all, she’s not needed for raids, and there are plenty around. Not that there aren’t also a lot of inquisitors in around too, but the guild could use an inquisitor some times. I honestly miss playing a healer, I played one pretty much all of my time in EQII until I decided to switch to illusionist for a bit, it’s been about 5 months now since I’ve been playing her.

The betrayal was fast, I had help from Dalthar, a brigand in guild. He snuck into the instance with me and would sneak around completing the quest while Dasie sat around, then I zoned her out, died to an epic, rinse repeat to finish the simple faction quests. She got her +10k with the city of Freeport within the hour, tamed a dog, killed a woman, and ta da. Dasie is a new inquisitor. I had adept3’s and masters set aside for her, so she was all set to go. Then came raid time. I typically play Stargrace on raids, the guild has plenty of healers. Well. Usually. Last night we had a shortage, and I was asked if I’d mind boxing both my healer and my illusionist on the raid. I don’t mind boxing, but boxing on a raid… is hard. Especially if you’re playing a healer — not to mention it was my first day playing an inquisitor.

I was a little leery at the end since we all have to run into Venekors room at the same time, and avoid adds and get back up against a wall. I had to do it with both girls fairly fast or risk wiping the raid, and I did not want to do that. I apologized ahead of time incase I caused a wipe, and uh, well my girl got stuck on the door, and of course, we wiped. Another raider went LD during the run anyhow, so it wasn’t completely my fault, but it was none the less. I felt horrible. So that was the only death of the evening at least. We went at it again, this time I made sure both characters were clear through the doors, backed up against a wall, all that good raid stuff that I’ve been doing for some time now. Kill was flawless, even with the lack of regular players.

Hopefully I’ll be playing the inquisitor more frequently, I had a blast. Granted, I am still learning her spells, and she’s not at 100aa yet, but hey, work in progress. I figure if I don’t like it I will just betray her back to templar in November when the level cap goes up. Do I regret giving up her master spells? She had all of them except one level 70 group reactive, including her T6 rare holy redoubt (a 962hp buff). Not really. I heal fairly well (not to brag, that’s not my point here) with or without the masters. She could *really* use some upgrades, but what’s the point if I’m not going to be playing her seriously. She could also use claymore. Ugh. I’m dreading doing that on a .. 4th… character… *sighs* We’ll see how it goes. Sorry my thoughts are all over today, weather has me a bit scatter brained. Didn’t see Kilanna this morning, hope she had a pleasant night though!

Chel’Drak, dead for the first time by the Inquisition

Last night was raid night, and it started with a very very fast run through labs. I did not find it enjoyable at all, I hate rushing through zones, easy or not. It was “get going faster faster” the entire time. We had one wipe to Vyemm who refused to be mem-wiped, and then headed off to make our first attempts at Chel’Drak. The inquisition had attempted him a time or two before I do believe, but they were not exactly sure what to expect this time. A majority of them had never been here. The raid was explained, macro’s made. Positions assigned. The first pull went beautifully. Well, positioning, not so much of a pull seeing as you have to charge into his room. Everyone had their parts down great. We had some bad luck, and three warrior adds spawned in a row. Anyone who’s done Chel’Drak before knows that it’s not the giant ancient dragon who kills you, but the class adds. Warriors taunt the entire raid onto different targets, which means healers can only use group heals to keep their tanks up. It’s not a pretty sight.

So we ate the wipe, and set up again. We came prepared, with repair kits. A whole lot of them in fact. Little did we know they would not be used at all this night. We charged in again.. and the adds came.. and went.. AoE’s were called. Encounters downed.. He hit 30% before we knew it.. 10.. 5.. 1%.. we burned like we’ve never burned before, and down he went. On the second pull. A huge congratulations to the guild as a whole for accomplishing this encounter on their second attempt. It gave people the motivational boost that they needed I think in order to do better at the EoF raids. Pride in themselves as players. Everyone brought their “A” game.

Now, I know guilds have had this specific encounter down to farm status for months now. Including my previous guild back in January, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many guilds have done it before you or how many guilds are to come after you, what matters is that there was a goal and through team work and a lot of hard work and patience, it was something everyone achieved together. I just wish more had been on the quest for the zone that gave them the pretty ring with 5% off their spell cast timers. Oh well! Now that we all know we can do it, hopefully future attempts will go just as smooth.

Since it was a raid night I didn’t get to attend any of the festivities going on in Antonica, but I did keep an ear out for the Feyiron Chef contest, it sounded like a lot of fun. Tonight there is more entertainment and I should be heading down that way unless something else comes up, we’ll see how it goes. Congratulations again The Inquisition on Antonia Bayle, a job well done.