Raids week 81

Last week on Saturday I was quite late for raids, because I had put an add up to sell my car, and people wanted to come look at it right away. I hadn’t expected things to happen that fast. After selling the car, and taking care of the degus, I logged on at about 10.30 pm my time. Since it was late, and most of my regulars weren’t on I didn’t feel like posting for EE/R1, but switched to Maidae and posted for baba’s hard. Interest was high and I barely got the lfm up before people started joining, even had to reserv the last spot for Gaijya. As for the run I suggested our two mass frog chars go to different sides during puzzles, other than that I told people to split up evenly. Puzzles went well and I felt like people listened this time when I said to kill wisps first. During the end fight when shamblers spawned and I wanted us to kill them, I aggro’d one of them and tanked him in a corner while the party worked on the other one. I was surprised that he didn’t do more damage to me than he did. We completed the raid in 40 minutes and got completely skunked on loot.

Next I wanted to do strahd. Two people left, I invited Devil and lfm’d for the last spot. Gaijya stepped in and went afk, once everyone was in we started without him and he rejoined us on the stairs. This time I didn’t die in the shadow fight, and the stairs went quite well too. Devil was carrying the sunsword and I believe he also stayed behind after the heart fight so we could shrine and spread out by the doors before the npc was activated. I didn’t find a card in mine, but then found an opened door with a card inside, so I stayed there. We had a bit of issues finding the first card, all the others were found but not the first one. Once we found it we lit the cards quickly and headed to the end. I decide that I’m going to park brides and Devil’s on Strahd. For some reason one of the brides stays aggro’d on the group, so I keep yelling stop on strahd, because a bride has died. When strahd is down to a few percent Devil dies and the sunsword is left on the ground. I ask for someone to pick it up, but I soon realise no one wants to do it, so I decide to do it myself. Maidae is pure ranged character, but I manage to melee strahd enough for the others to take him out. Brides go down quickly and I plunge the sunsword into strahd and we complete in 34 minutes. Sanctity, the Morninglord’s Keep and Fleetfoot Necklace dropped.

I think Gaijya wanted to do TS, and I posted for that one next. I completely spaced on the fact that Devil has done strength for us before on that character, and I missed that he wrote in party that he can do str. So I had a spot reserved for str a little while. We didn’t wait too long to start, and we had enough people anyway. The raid progressed quickly, fire and ice was done in a moment, we short-cutted to the rusties room, shrined and headed for the end. The beholder didn’t give us any problems, we buffed and stepped through to the end. I completed the puzzle while the party did the render and then placed myself in the safe spot next to Skilganan. This end fight wasn’t as smooth as last week, we had some deaths, but I didn’t get much aggro, or at least I didn’t take much damage. We completed in 16 minutes and a few named items dropped.

Next I decided to post for Defiler. I was curious about trying an R1, especially since the EE we did last time went so well. I suggested we give it a try, and change diff if it lags too much. We fill quickly and step in. At the first gate we lag and almost wipe, a couple of people manage to stay alive and raise the party. During the archons bit we have some lag spikes but manage to kill executioners and reinforcements – until we’re hit with a major spike and fail to take the reinforcements out. The raid fails and we’re kicked from the instance. A couple of people are not up for trying again, so I lfm for the free spots. Next we try EE instead. The EE is almost lag free and we manage to kill almost everything – one archon was lost. We get to the end, kill the snake and start fighting the boss. As she’s getting low on hp we’re hit with a lag spike, we can’t really see the bombardment, I get hit and die (as you can see in the screenshot, it’s fire, but you don’t actually see the attack), as do several others. I tell the party – the ones still alive – to just focus on taking the boss out. Suddenly we complete – with most of the party dead. Since the shrine spawns on completion this wasn’t a problem, we get our loot.

Some wanted to do a shroud, so I post for it, but as the lfm goes up, people start leaving and we’re soon only 3 people left in party. Since it was getting closer to 2 in the morning for me, I wasn’t keen on waiting for a shroud party. If it had been only a few spots yes, but not almost a full party. I ask the group if they mind if we don’t do shroud, then thank them and log off.

That’s all for raids 81.
Until next time.