Finish What You Started
Sunday night we returned to The Eye to finish our little engagement with Solarian.
The raid formed up pretty quick and we were in and pulling by 8:30. We blew through Al'ar's trash without a single wipe. That was the first time we managed to pull that off. You knew it was going to be a good night we were didn't pull the patrol while working on that first room.
Solarian's trash is actually quite enjoyable to me as a Protection Paladin. I love taking the Squire packs and locking them down. Sometimes my Mages and Warlocks would get a little impatient and start opening up before I got all the mobs under control and before I called for AoE. This generally led to a quick and painful death for them.
It seemed the Warlocks were pulling more so than the Mages. What I started doing was tabbing through targets looking for someone who was targeting a squishy and taunt. By the final pull, I don't think our AoE was taking any damage at all, although I was probably waiting longer than necessary to call for AoE.
So we get Solarian's room clear, get buffed up and get ready to pull.
As a offtank, my main job happens during the splits, when Solarian spawns her adds. So in between, I've got plenty of time to watch for the debuff and call it out over vent. Friday, we had a couple of people who didn't move away from the raid fast enough. Some of these very same people were again made the Bomb, but this time they moved away from the raid.
We had a dicey moment when one of our rogues was turned into the bomb. We were finishing off the Priests that Solarian spawns. The rogue started running away, but was running straight for another group. Somehow the guy changed directions again and got out of range before we exploded. It was an excellent job on his part.
We handled the Bomb flawlessly. Not a single person blew up on the raid. That's a remarkable improvement from our first night.
I picked up the Squires as fast as I could but we have to get the adds down really fast so the AoE can't wait for me to establish a threat lead. I did the same thing here I did on the trash, tab target through and taunt if one of them wasn't aggored to me. That seemed to work well and we didn't lose any of our AoE during the splits.
We hit the 20% mark and Solarian turned into a huge Voidwalker. At this point, it was a basic "tank and spank". Brindall (Warrior) had her threat locked down so I threw some heals on him to help out our regular healers.
We finished what we started Friday and downed her.
Mal Katai is now 3/6 2/4. We are exactly halfway through the T5 bosses!
With Solarian dead, we decided to go take a look at Al'ar. No one had really studied up on the fight. We didn't think we'd get done with trash and Solarian so fast.
Al'ar looks like a very challenging fight. My job is grab the Embers of Al'ar that spawn when Al'ar himself moves from platform to platform. I had done some research on the fight, and it looked like I could wait at the bottom on the ramp to grab the embers as they came down. But that's not what happened. The Embers would spawn and start heading for the ramp, then they would turn around and go after our Feral Druid (Trelic). Trelic wasn't sure why they were aggroing to him. Then from Trelic they would aggro to Brindall who was tanking Al'ar. I spent most of my time running around chasing Embers and trying to get them under control. By the time I got one add under control, another would spawn. They certainly weren't coming down the ramp in a nice assembly line fashion for me to deal with.
We wiped with Al'ar at about 60% in Phase 1.
We buff up and get ready to pull again, but the respawn timer on Al'ar's trash was up. We pulled anyway. This would not have been a problem except for my favorite pat. Yes, the one that always wipes us in the first room. Well they pat all the way into Al'ar's room. When they came into the room, we moved away from the door but they aggroed to one of our healers and that was basically it.
Instead of reclearing trash to Al'ar, our Raid Leaders, Doraeallian and Raistlan called for us to boogie our way to SSC. It was deemed better to go farm a boss we could down than reclear trash to a brand new boss.
I was really proud of the way the raid moved from one instance to the next with the tanks dropping by their respective banks to grab resist gear.
We zoned into SSC and buffed up and handled the Hydross trash. I got a little snippy in chat when people started killing the Hydross adds. This put me in combat which meant I couldn't change into my resist gear.
The night was already a success, and everything now was just gravy. I felt bad later on for being so uptight.
We wiped on our first pull of Hydross when we lost our Nature tank, Brindall. There had been a miscommunication among the healing team that we got sorted out.
So we regrouped to pull again. This time the attempt went well and we got him down with nearly 2 mintues to go on the enrage timer. Unfortunately, we had run out of time so no Lurker.
After the raid, Trelic was forming up a premade AB so I joined up. I was assigned to node defense. Basically even my measly little 41 white hit can stop someone trying to cap a flag. In full tank gear, I had nearly 20k hp. Since most PVPers assume everyone is loaded to the hilt with Resilience they are gearing for AP or spell power over Crit. In my tanking gear I have about 36 resilience from my shield and mace. Unless the Horde zerged hard, I was going to last a while.
Best example of this was in our 2nd game when I was defending the mine. A Warrior comes riding down and then a Rogue unstealths next to me. I calmly (at least I hope it was calmly) call for reinforcements. The Rogue and the Warrior start banging away on me. I trinket out of the Warrior's fear and stoneform the Rogue's poison. So long as I draw breath, they aren't capping my flag. I was down to around 30% life when Crunkbaby (Hunter) and Cyrak (Warrior) come riding to my rescue.
We rolled, as in 5 capped, 3 games in a row. Brindall was chuckling that the que time was taking longer than the actual games. It was getting late, so I had to call it a night at this point. It was a fun night and another brand new boss down, plus we tried a brand new boss as well which was exciting.
The raid formed up pretty quick and we were in and pulling by 8:30. We blew through Al'ar's trash without a single wipe. That was the first time we managed to pull that off. You knew it was going to be a good night we were didn't pull the patrol while working on that first room.
Solarian's trash is actually quite enjoyable to me as a Protection Paladin. I love taking the Squire packs and locking them down. Sometimes my Mages and Warlocks would get a little impatient and start opening up before I got all the mobs under control and before I called for AoE. This generally led to a quick and painful death for them.
It seemed the Warlocks were pulling more so than the Mages. What I started doing was tabbing through targets looking for someone who was targeting a squishy and taunt. By the final pull, I don't think our AoE was taking any damage at all, although I was probably waiting longer than necessary to call for AoE.
So we get Solarian's room clear, get buffed up and get ready to pull.
As a offtank, my main job happens during the splits, when Solarian spawns her adds. So in between, I've got plenty of time to watch for the debuff and call it out over vent. Friday, we had a couple of people who didn't move away from the raid fast enough. Some of these very same people were again made the Bomb, but this time they moved away from the raid.
We had a dicey moment when one of our rogues was turned into the bomb. We were finishing off the Priests that Solarian spawns. The rogue started running away, but was running straight for another group. Somehow the guy changed directions again and got out of range before we exploded. It was an excellent job on his part.
We handled the Bomb flawlessly. Not a single person blew up on the raid. That's a remarkable improvement from our first night.
I picked up the Squires as fast as I could but we have to get the adds down really fast so the AoE can't wait for me to establish a threat lead. I did the same thing here I did on the trash, tab target through and taunt if one of them wasn't aggored to me. That seemed to work well and we didn't lose any of our AoE during the splits.
We hit the 20% mark and Solarian turned into a huge Voidwalker. At this point, it was a basic "tank and spank". Brindall (Warrior) had her threat locked down so I threw some heals on him to help out our regular healers.
We finished what we started Friday and downed her.
Mal Katai is now 3/6 2/4. We are exactly halfway through the T5 bosses!
With Solarian dead, we decided to go take a look at Al'ar. No one had really studied up on the fight. We didn't think we'd get done with trash and Solarian so fast.
Al'ar looks like a very challenging fight. My job is grab the Embers of Al'ar that spawn when Al'ar himself moves from platform to platform. I had done some research on the fight, and it looked like I could wait at the bottom on the ramp to grab the embers as they came down. But that's not what happened. The Embers would spawn and start heading for the ramp, then they would turn around and go after our Feral Druid (Trelic). Trelic wasn't sure why they were aggroing to him. Then from Trelic they would aggro to Brindall who was tanking Al'ar. I spent most of my time running around chasing Embers and trying to get them under control. By the time I got one add under control, another would spawn. They certainly weren't coming down the ramp in a nice assembly line fashion for me to deal with.
We wiped with Al'ar at about 60% in Phase 1.
We buff up and get ready to pull again, but the respawn timer on Al'ar's trash was up. We pulled anyway. This would not have been a problem except for my favorite pat. Yes, the one that always wipes us in the first room. Well they pat all the way into Al'ar's room. When they came into the room, we moved away from the door but they aggroed to one of our healers and that was basically it.
Instead of reclearing trash to Al'ar, our Raid Leaders, Doraeallian and Raistlan called for us to boogie our way to SSC. It was deemed better to go farm a boss we could down than reclear trash to a brand new boss.
I was really proud of the way the raid moved from one instance to the next with the tanks dropping by their respective banks to grab resist gear.
We zoned into SSC and buffed up and handled the Hydross trash. I got a little snippy in chat when people started killing the Hydross adds. This put me in combat which meant I couldn't change into my resist gear.
The night was already a success, and everything now was just gravy. I felt bad later on for being so uptight.
We wiped on our first pull of Hydross when we lost our Nature tank, Brindall. There had been a miscommunication among the healing team that we got sorted out.
So we regrouped to pull again. This time the attempt went well and we got him down with nearly 2 mintues to go on the enrage timer. Unfortunately, we had run out of time so no Lurker.
After the raid, Trelic was forming up a premade AB so I joined up. I was assigned to node defense. Basically even my measly little 41 white hit can stop someone trying to cap a flag. In full tank gear, I had nearly 20k hp. Since most PVPers assume everyone is loaded to the hilt with Resilience they are gearing for AP or spell power over Crit. In my tanking gear I have about 36 resilience from my shield and mace. Unless the Horde zerged hard, I was going to last a while.
Best example of this was in our 2nd game when I was defending the mine. A Warrior comes riding down and then a Rogue unstealths next to me. I calmly (at least I hope it was calmly) call for reinforcements. The Rogue and the Warrior start banging away on me. I trinket out of the Warrior's fear and stoneform the Rogue's poison. So long as I draw breath, they aren't capping my flag. I was down to around 30% life when Crunkbaby (Hunter) and Cyrak (Warrior) come riding to my rescue.
We rolled, as in 5 capped, 3 games in a row. Brindall was chuckling that the que time was taking longer than the actual games. It was getting late, so I had to call it a night at this point. It was a fun night and another brand new boss down, plus we tried a brand new boss as well which was exciting.
Comments
We have our hunters just shoot Alar spawns to get them moving down the ramps. Doesnt require a misdirect or anything, just a couple of shots gets the job done.
As they're coming down, you can see quite easily which ramp they're heading down, and you can run over and intercept them.
We also get Hunters to Misdirect where they can to get them moving, but it's not really that necessary. We prefer to leave the MD's up in case an Ember gets away in phase 2.