Ragar: Most of this past week was spent farming or working with the team's rookies (I'll get to them later on once I'm convinced they won't get eaten by something in the Barrens), but there were a couple of raids we can discuss. Solannis had his typical Thursday excursion into Naxxramas with 24 of our guildmates and Mordigg made his first trip into the necropolis as well. So Sol, how'd your run go?
Solannis: It was a pretty standard trip for us, though not one of our better nights. We had more deaths on the trash pulls than usual and a couple of the boss fights could have been smoother.
Ragar: Anything stand out that might have explained the extra deaths?
Solannis: I don't think the pull frequency caused it - I was pulling fast, but the main tank and I usually go at a pretty fast rate. We had a new off-tank, but he seemed to be doing a fine job keeping up. Mostly I think it was due to positioning (i.e. melee dying on whirlwinds) and getting adds after a pull due to people being too close or too far away. I think it was mainly just an off night and it'll be back to normal this week.
Ragar: Adds, huh? You mean like getting one of those shades after a pull, or maybe a patrol?
Solannis: More like we managed to get four of the 4-6 packs of death knights between Gothik and the Four Horsemen. It wasn't pretty, but we got through it.
Ragar: How about you, Mordigg? Was your first Naxx run quite as exciting as Sol's?
Mordigg: Yes, but for different reasons. The group was made up mostly of members from your guild and I was brought in as their off-tank. Most of the members of the group were well-equipped with the various pieces they'd found on the larger scale Naxxramas excursions with Solannis, so the main tank/raid leader decided to make things more "interesting".
Ragar: Interesting, huh? Knowing him, that's another word for expensive, but go on.
Mordigg: At the time there weren't enough guild members on for a full 10-man group, so rather than waiting for others to check in or delving into the horrors of Trade chat for filler, our leader decided to try 8-manning the dungeon for the achievement.
Ragar: I haven't tried to 8-man that place yet. How'd that work out for you?
Mordigg: It actually worked fairly well, considering we had a less than ideal group composition and didn't really come up with a plan beforehand on how to underman some of the fights. We cleared the Arachnid Quarter, the Plague Quarter, and almost cleared the Military Quarter. In the end we just couldn't get past the Four Horsemen. We had a very melee heavy group and I don't believe we had a ranged DPS that could heal themselves for the back, so our two healers were spread very thin. We did try a few different ways of doing the fight, but they ended up calling the run and said we'd try again later. Haven't gone back yet though since everyone got distracted by candy and love fools, so we may just have to start from the beginning this week.
Ragar: Pick up any new equipment?
Mordigg: A few pieces - some boots from Noth, a pair of gloves from Grand Widow Faerlina, and I'm five emblems away from a new belt now. Unfortunately the boots and gloves are sidegrades from my old gloves from Gun'Drak and the boots you crafted. The bonuses are a bit better distributed than my old pieces so they're still worth using, but not quite as big of a jump as it would have been if I'd replaced one of my non-epic pieces.
Ragar: So any impressions from the 8-man run? I know you've never seen the place in a full raid, but let's hear your thoughts.
Mordigg: Well it's hard to compare it to something I've never done before, but I did think the difficulty was rather enjoyable even with the associated repair costs and extra retreats/deaths. I'm not saying that I'd want to do something that hectic every time and I'm certainly not advocating that we leave someone out of the run that could use equipment from there just so we could go for the achievement, but if it comes up again that there's only eight of us available and nothing is happening, I'm all for trying it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment