Lance Berg
2006-08-08 12:37:19 UTC
Skyfire Mountains is an old hangout for me, having played a cleric back
when they changed the epic (arguably with me as one of the causitive
factors) to a spawnable Ragefire, and subsequently helping other clerics
get their pearlescent fragment, and also working on getting Eldrig, an
epic mob, to spawn for my bard's epic drop (and for a couple other bards)
So I know one thing, Guardian Wurms are the big kahuna on the block,
level 60, summoning, nasty. Avoid when you can, zone when you can't,
thats been my policy for years.
Oh sure, well geared groups of high levels (and by that I mean high 50s,
in eras where there were no 65's out there, much less 70s) could take
them on, and of course torpored shaman would solo them for fun and
profit, but they weren't for mere mortals.
A shaman in my guild though, who played a higher level shaman a few
years back on another server, felt differently, and put some effort into
lobbying the guild for a try. Not as a raid, just as a serious well put
together group.
Well I've been pushing SF in the guild as well, as it has to be one of
the best spell dropping zones in the game, plus cleric epic drops, plus
bard epic and monk epic and so on. Normally the down side is that the
ZEM is relatively low and the mobs are relatively slow to kill and slow
to pull for that matter... however, with its current Hot Zone status, it
now compares favorably with Sebelis and other dungeons (but not to COM
or KC, as long as they are dark blue, the exp there still beats SF...
except that they're also evercamped)
SO I've been exping there with partial groups, getting some spells for
the guild out of it, and discovering that there are some other drops I
never heard of, like a nice totem that replaced my range slot, and an
augment that gives your weapon Ykesha (Didn't win this one, but its out
there)
Yesterday afternoon, though, the shaman and I started a group together.
Now honestly, she can solo anything else in the zone, while I can solo
only the easier of the mobs there. This is always a bit disheartening,
as it makes me feel unnecessary... what I don't know is to what extent
partnering with me speeds up her net exp per hour or kills per hour. I
can say she speeds me up in exp by more than triple, and in kills
sixfold; hasted, mob slowed, I can solo almost any mob there, but I
dont' even have to do that as she's also got heals so I don't have to
rely on lifetapping, and she's got her pet and even a DOT or two if she
feels like it.
But thats not our goal, we add more people, which really makes a mockery
of the mobs, we're pulling in two or three at a time simply because,
slowed, any of us can tear one down, and whats slowing us down is the
pull rate. Enchanter haste is even better than shaman haste, and
clarity II (best in our guild) turns things up yet another notch, not to
mention charming adds to further increase DPS.
But then we get our big score, the only epic currently in our guild (we
got it for her just last night) is Ragebringer, and we get the rogue
bearing it to come join us. We also have a necromancer, and a wizard,
and finally a cleric who just joined the guild the previous evening pops
and we grab her before she's spirited away to Karnors or Seb or one of
the other guild groups out there. Fortunately, we can offer
transportation, another of the many reasons I love to include a wizard
or druid in any group if I can; faced with a long walk to the other
dungeons, or a port directly to the combat zone, cleric sees the light :)
Now we get serious, practice working together a bit on the boring mobs
like ancient wyverns (yeah, boring in the "I wouldn't touch this solo
with a ten foot pole" sense) and make sure full buffs are up and
everyone's back from AFK... then the shaman goes out and pulls our first
guardian. As we discussed, we don't touch it, she just runs it around
in circles trying to land slow. Crucial element of our plan... and we
were concerned that at 54 she might not be able to do it, in which case
all bets were off.
Took three tries, but slow landed. Now step two, can the SK get aggro?
I'll tell you, it wasn't so easy, multiple slow attempts really
torqued that guardian off, it took several casts and getting in close
enough to taunt, but finally I had it on me. Pounding me, hitting up to
530 a shot, and shaming my double attack prowess by demonstrating what
triples look like. Once I had it, though, all kinds hell were unleashed
on it, necro pet and DOTs, wizard nukes, shaman pet, epic rogue
disasterness... and the cleric swung into Cheals with the shaman and my
lifetaps spot healing when it got scary (Yeah, 150 point lifetaps aren't
all that much help honestly, but since I got down as low as 3% hp a few
times, I figure they were still part of the difference between living
and flowers for the widow)
When the guardian let us in on his little bonus surprise, near death, by
Enraging, I would have taken a long dirt nap if not for the fact that
I'm weilding, by chance, a 44 delay weapon, the charred wooden rod,
which happens to have the best ratio I've seen on the server barring the
SK epic (37/44 as opposed to 40/45) so the fact that the conversation in
my head going "OMG enrage, I've seen that in raids, and the raid leaders
always shout for.... the tanks to.... turn. Off. attack. Yeah,
turn... wow he's riposting me. Now what was that I was ... another
riposte, wow, what are the odds... oh, turn off attack. Well that
seems... another riposte. Three in a row, how does he... OFFF OFFF
OFFFF where's the button OFFFF. Lifetap, cheal lands at 5%, enrage
ends, he turns to go, and I follow... with my attack still off. Oh
wait, attack back on. He goes RIP (running in place, that lovely point
where the snared mob isn't so much running away, as just standing there
waiting to die) and then falls.
No spells. Couple wurm meats. We don't care, we proved we could do it,
and without HT or any other non refreshables, a little mana regen and we
could repeat the process a few minutes later. And did. And got two
level 60 spells. And repeated again and again, over the next several
hours, averaging one spell per guardian, along with lots of "trash mobs"
which also drop spells you can't get from vendors supplying our group,
and our guild, with pile of the things.
At one point, a chromo add dropped by a group next to us took out all my
buffs and we still managed to tank the guardian we'd pulled (some of the
HP buffs got slapped on as quasi heals and to improve Cheal efficiency)
There were also, shall we say, incedents; I died a couple times when the
RNG set me up with max damage triples while I was already LHP, others
died by getting aggro off me despite repeated warnings that they were
not going to be able to shrug the thing off (and it was true, if they
got aggro they inevitably took so much damage first round that they then
had low hp aggro and couldn't be peeled before the second round which
killed them)... well others not including the rogue, who never got aggro
once but who could probably have taken a round, more if they switched
heals to her. And not including the shaman, who's running away skills
were very finely honed and who wasn't about to take that first round of
damage, much less any later ones. On occaision when she got aggro,
she'd just kite until I got it back, and then thanked her for the
cripple, which really helped calm the beast down still further.
Was it great exp? No, in a good 8 hours I got 4 yellow, I'm pretty sure
I can do better than that at 54 somewhere; the trouble was the
guardians, which took time to kill and recover from; exp was faster when
there were no guardians to be had so we were doing lesser mobs! And I
got not one drop for myself, since I already had the totem and the rogue
won the only Augment we saw (making her already fierce DPS even fiercer,
or will once she hits a birdbath).
But the cleric got two fragments, and we got a couple dozen spells for
the guild, including one which we mentioned in public channels and
recieved offers over 32Kpp for (which is an astonishing sum on Combine,
with no plat vendors and a sub 60 economy)... necro has it tucked away
for when he hits 59, though.
And we got the adulation of our peers, which I have to say is also a
plus; apparantly we were the first, at least publicly, to go after
guardians on the server, and the guild and the channels were going crazy
about it. We spawned immitators, which tended to wipe, we got lots of
questions about how exactly we were doing it, we got lots of requests
for spells... good times.
Berg, 54 SK, wurmslayer, Combine
when they changed the epic (arguably with me as one of the causitive
factors) to a spawnable Ragefire, and subsequently helping other clerics
get their pearlescent fragment, and also working on getting Eldrig, an
epic mob, to spawn for my bard's epic drop (and for a couple other bards)
So I know one thing, Guardian Wurms are the big kahuna on the block,
level 60, summoning, nasty. Avoid when you can, zone when you can't,
thats been my policy for years.
Oh sure, well geared groups of high levels (and by that I mean high 50s,
in eras where there were no 65's out there, much less 70s) could take
them on, and of course torpored shaman would solo them for fun and
profit, but they weren't for mere mortals.
A shaman in my guild though, who played a higher level shaman a few
years back on another server, felt differently, and put some effort into
lobbying the guild for a try. Not as a raid, just as a serious well put
together group.
Well I've been pushing SF in the guild as well, as it has to be one of
the best spell dropping zones in the game, plus cleric epic drops, plus
bard epic and monk epic and so on. Normally the down side is that the
ZEM is relatively low and the mobs are relatively slow to kill and slow
to pull for that matter... however, with its current Hot Zone status, it
now compares favorably with Sebelis and other dungeons (but not to COM
or KC, as long as they are dark blue, the exp there still beats SF...
except that they're also evercamped)
SO I've been exping there with partial groups, getting some spells for
the guild out of it, and discovering that there are some other drops I
never heard of, like a nice totem that replaced my range slot, and an
augment that gives your weapon Ykesha (Didn't win this one, but its out
there)
Yesterday afternoon, though, the shaman and I started a group together.
Now honestly, she can solo anything else in the zone, while I can solo
only the easier of the mobs there. This is always a bit disheartening,
as it makes me feel unnecessary... what I don't know is to what extent
partnering with me speeds up her net exp per hour or kills per hour. I
can say she speeds me up in exp by more than triple, and in kills
sixfold; hasted, mob slowed, I can solo almost any mob there, but I
dont' even have to do that as she's also got heals so I don't have to
rely on lifetapping, and she's got her pet and even a DOT or two if she
feels like it.
But thats not our goal, we add more people, which really makes a mockery
of the mobs, we're pulling in two or three at a time simply because,
slowed, any of us can tear one down, and whats slowing us down is the
pull rate. Enchanter haste is even better than shaman haste, and
clarity II (best in our guild) turns things up yet another notch, not to
mention charming adds to further increase DPS.
But then we get our big score, the only epic currently in our guild (we
got it for her just last night) is Ragebringer, and we get the rogue
bearing it to come join us. We also have a necromancer, and a wizard,
and finally a cleric who just joined the guild the previous evening pops
and we grab her before she's spirited away to Karnors or Seb or one of
the other guild groups out there. Fortunately, we can offer
transportation, another of the many reasons I love to include a wizard
or druid in any group if I can; faced with a long walk to the other
dungeons, or a port directly to the combat zone, cleric sees the light :)
Now we get serious, practice working together a bit on the boring mobs
like ancient wyverns (yeah, boring in the "I wouldn't touch this solo
with a ten foot pole" sense) and make sure full buffs are up and
everyone's back from AFK... then the shaman goes out and pulls our first
guardian. As we discussed, we don't touch it, she just runs it around
in circles trying to land slow. Crucial element of our plan... and we
were concerned that at 54 she might not be able to do it, in which case
all bets were off.
Took three tries, but slow landed. Now step two, can the SK get aggro?
I'll tell you, it wasn't so easy, multiple slow attempts really
torqued that guardian off, it took several casts and getting in close
enough to taunt, but finally I had it on me. Pounding me, hitting up to
530 a shot, and shaming my double attack prowess by demonstrating what
triples look like. Once I had it, though, all kinds hell were unleashed
on it, necro pet and DOTs, wizard nukes, shaman pet, epic rogue
disasterness... and the cleric swung into Cheals with the shaman and my
lifetaps spot healing when it got scary (Yeah, 150 point lifetaps aren't
all that much help honestly, but since I got down as low as 3% hp a few
times, I figure they were still part of the difference between living
and flowers for the widow)
When the guardian let us in on his little bonus surprise, near death, by
Enraging, I would have taken a long dirt nap if not for the fact that
I'm weilding, by chance, a 44 delay weapon, the charred wooden rod,
which happens to have the best ratio I've seen on the server barring the
SK epic (37/44 as opposed to 40/45) so the fact that the conversation in
my head going "OMG enrage, I've seen that in raids, and the raid leaders
always shout for.... the tanks to.... turn. Off. attack. Yeah,
turn... wow he's riposting me. Now what was that I was ... another
riposte, wow, what are the odds... oh, turn off attack. Well that
seems... another riposte. Three in a row, how does he... OFFF OFFF
OFFFF where's the button OFFFF. Lifetap, cheal lands at 5%, enrage
ends, he turns to go, and I follow... with my attack still off. Oh
wait, attack back on. He goes RIP (running in place, that lovely point
where the snared mob isn't so much running away, as just standing there
waiting to die) and then falls.
No spells. Couple wurm meats. We don't care, we proved we could do it,
and without HT or any other non refreshables, a little mana regen and we
could repeat the process a few minutes later. And did. And got two
level 60 spells. And repeated again and again, over the next several
hours, averaging one spell per guardian, along with lots of "trash mobs"
which also drop spells you can't get from vendors supplying our group,
and our guild, with pile of the things.
At one point, a chromo add dropped by a group next to us took out all my
buffs and we still managed to tank the guardian we'd pulled (some of the
HP buffs got slapped on as quasi heals and to improve Cheal efficiency)
There were also, shall we say, incedents; I died a couple times when the
RNG set me up with max damage triples while I was already LHP, others
died by getting aggro off me despite repeated warnings that they were
not going to be able to shrug the thing off (and it was true, if they
got aggro they inevitably took so much damage first round that they then
had low hp aggro and couldn't be peeled before the second round which
killed them)... well others not including the rogue, who never got aggro
once but who could probably have taken a round, more if they switched
heals to her. And not including the shaman, who's running away skills
were very finely honed and who wasn't about to take that first round of
damage, much less any later ones. On occaision when she got aggro,
she'd just kite until I got it back, and then thanked her for the
cripple, which really helped calm the beast down still further.
Was it great exp? No, in a good 8 hours I got 4 yellow, I'm pretty sure
I can do better than that at 54 somewhere; the trouble was the
guardians, which took time to kill and recover from; exp was faster when
there were no guardians to be had so we were doing lesser mobs! And I
got not one drop for myself, since I already had the totem and the rogue
won the only Augment we saw (making her already fierce DPS even fiercer,
or will once she hits a birdbath).
But the cleric got two fragments, and we got a couple dozen spells for
the guild, including one which we mentioned in public channels and
recieved offers over 32Kpp for (which is an astonishing sum on Combine,
with no plat vendors and a sub 60 economy)... necro has it tucked away
for when he hits 59, though.
And we got the adulation of our peers, which I have to say is also a
plus; apparantly we were the first, at least publicly, to go after
guardians on the server, and the guild and the channels were going crazy
about it. We spawned immitators, which tended to wipe, we got lots of
questions about how exactly we were doing it, we got lots of requests
for spells... good times.
Berg, 54 SK, wurmslayer, Combine