On Saturday when I logged at 9 pm, Tahlua and Devil were already online. Osi had reincarnated and seemed busy in Gianthold. I put the lfm up, then sent an invite to Devil and Tahlua before accepting people off the lfm. This Saturday felt a bit odd. Usually about half the party is Soko members, but this week I got several joiners whose name I didn’t recognize and that were in a guild that doesn’t often join the raids. Nabnirob and Nedlyne joined from Matrix and I suggested we do elite with them dual-tanking the shamblers. I had no idea if that would work, I just remembered Nab saying he’s done that before, maybe not with Ned though. I reserved the last spot for someone switching and noticed some had already stepped in on elite, before I got a confirmation that we would try the dual-tanking thing. Since I’m not a fan of choosing teams I said I was going to go right and that Nab should go left, that we need a tank and a puzzler on each side, but that I want people to pick sides. I also said I wanted Devil or Tahlua to go right with me. At first it looked like we split unevenly, but then it looked like we didn’t. I wasn’t sure if the other side had an insta killer for totems as it seemed that my side every so often completed our part a little bit faster than the other side.
Until we got to the red crows, Nedlyne was doing puzzles with me, when we got to the reds Ned grabbed them to keep them away and I did the puzzles myself. I struggled a bit to get all the crows with mass frog, implosion is more reliable so after a miss or two I figured it’d be better if I did’t use mass frog. Second time through the hut we had some deaths due to wisps. Since I can’t insta kill them I usually cast sunburst on them to blind them. Blind mobs usually do less damage since they can’t see you to attack you (some melee mobs will hit even if blind, though). We get to the end fight, kill wisps and Nab and Ned are ready to grab shamblers. At first the shamblers aggro on someone fighting baba, I don’t know why. When that person goes down Nab and Ned manage to the get aggro back. Things are fine until the hp debuff. Or actually the second time the debuff happens. I notice both of our tanks struggling to stay healed, so I move my focus from the party to them. The party didn’t need heals anyway, and dps was good. I focus my heals on one, or actually switch a few times while throwing mass cures, but still I’m too slow and first Nab drops and then Ned. I see things going wrong, but tell the party to just kill baba. Baba is at about 150k hp at this point so I think we can finish it. Before shamblers even have time to attack the party, baba goes down that the raid completes. Spite, the Fractured Shards, Memory of a Tailor’s Duress, Gulthias Staff, Vestments of Ravenloft, The Invisible Cloak of Strahd and Echo of the Icon dropped.
We lost some party members after baba’s and I posted for strahd. I considered elite, but thought a hard run would be better since we didn’t have a dedicated tank. When we were one person short of a full party I stepped in to read the cards and pick up one of the trinkets. Once we had a full party, everyone was in and the other trinket picked up, I proceeded into the next room where I again waited for everyone before starting the fight. This time the first fight was rather interesting. I managed to get aggro of both the red shadows and couldn’t shake them before they killed me. By the time my death timer was up, we already had 21 kills, so I just ran to activate “Find Strahd”, before joining the party by Rudolph. During stairs, I believe no one fell off, but we did have a few deaths due to traps and grip. One of the trappers died a few times so we were lucky to have two which means we didn’t need to wait for the trapper to continue.
We get to the top with the whole party alive (which is unusual), and Tahlua who is carrying the sunsword steps through. The rest of us follow once I’ve realised we can, lol. The heart fight has a few deaths like it always does and once it’s finished I grab the sunsword to open the d-door. We wait a bit on the stairs for most to get back up before d-dooring. I asked Devil to stay behind again. We shrine and spread out by the doors, take a moment to make sure everyone knows what to do before I ask Devil to talk. The cards are found quite fast and we complete the doors part with only a few deaths. I failed to fight 3 flame skulls while reading out the order of the cards so died. This time I at least managed to say which tomb I was hiding in. For the end fight Tahlua was Strahd tank and Lujaan on brides. Things were going quite well for a while, then one of them dropped and later the other. I think Lujaan got gripped, while I failed to heal Tahlua. Devil grabbed the sunsword and I think Drbadass the brides and soon after we completed. Two named items dropped: Platemail of Strahd and The Masque.
Lujaan was short on time and wanted to do Defiler, so I posted for that one next. I wasn’t so sure about our ability to short man, so waited until we were at least 10 before starting. I’m considering waiting for more, but then take the lfm down and lock the raid. As I’m running to the gate I get hit by the blades at least 3 times and die. I get a raise from someone and the fight starts. This time things go smoothly even though we lag a bit. I’m not sure what happened but I drop right away after my raise and I wonder if it was a raise dead I accepted. I get another and it lags and I think I’ve died again, when the raise just took a lot longer than usually to do it’s thing. The fight finishes, we kill the first executioners and spread out at south, north and center. I don’t split the party, but let people choose where to be. I notice that the south side has less people, so I choose to stay there. My worries about a short man was rather in vain and we progressed and later completed without losing any archons. The only deaths in the run were mine at the gate, lol. We completed in 21 minutes and Ultimatum, Fellblade and Many-Hooked Greaves dropped.
Horhus and Lujaan left after Defiler and I posted for Killing Time. As last week we going a bit back and worth about who to be on dragon, who heals, who tanks in ToD and who can kite shadows. Peido and Partypony were saying they can heal the tank, I picked Simlock for dragon tank and Peido as heals and some extra dps. For some this was their first run of the raid so I explained the objectives a bit. Soon after we started Simlock was replaced by Tahlua, but as we headed into the first rift I learned that Snowman had taken over tanking. Peido told Tahlua to go into the rift, but we were by then almost done so they wouldn’t have made it anyway. During fight 3 and 4 (before the second rift), we struggled a bit with trash, but soon after the party realised the importance of killing trash and the rest went better. For the second rift, we needed Snow to do shadows so Tahlua and Peido followed the dragon, while Devil tanked Nythirios. This time the shadow fight went as flawless as it can go with no shadow attacking us at all. The third and last rift also went really well and soon after we completed. The raid completed in 41 minutes and Tornado dropped.
I wanted to do RSO, asked the party if anyone wanted to run it with me. Most stayed and I lfm’d for the spots that opened up. Since we didn’t have a dedicated tank and I do like being able to turn undead the skellies in RSO, I asked if anyone was opposed to an easy normal run before stepping in on normal. Asbat dc’d as we stepped in, and after waiting 5 min we were ready to go without him. As puzzles are under way Devil asks if his friend could join us and I tell Foxxy to stop and not complete the puzzle. We end up waiting for a last joiner, then Asbat reconnects and we wait for both of them before finally doing the puzzles again. I run in and kill the skellies and leave the king to the rest of the party. I consider helping with the king, but then decide that it’s more fun to kill skellies, so I decide to spawn the skellies by the puzzles and kill them. The party finishes the king before I’m done and join me in killing skellies and doing puzzles. Once done we take the jets up to the dragon for the first dragon fight. The fight completes quite quickly – during this fight you only need to get her to about half.
I suggest we go as a party SE to make things easier. I run ahead, kill a skellie and open the first puzzle. The party follows kills anther skellie and opens the other puzzle. When I see that we have puzzlers on both I run to the next puzzle, open it and make sure there is a puzzler for it. I continue like this until I and foxxy get to the north puzzles (via the ravine) where I kill the skellies up top and then do the west side puzzle, while some others do the east side. I continue to the west puzzles and notice that someone has already opened the path and is fighting the skellies. I kill the skellies and stay and watch while puzzles are being done (to help heal). We complete and continue south. The next two puzzles are already finished or completed and we all gather up at the south west puzzles. Wait for them to complete, raise the people who died from lightning, then continue north and through center to the shrine. This week I warned the party that taking the jet up to the dragon will activate her. Everyone followed to the shrine, we shrined and headed to the dragon. The second and last dragon fight went quite well, even without a dedicated tank. The dragon moved and turned a bit, but the deaths were few and we killed her in about 3 minutes. The raid completed in 43 minutes (of which I guess the waiting that the start counts) and 3 named items dropped: Gauntlets of the Aggressor, Glacial Insignia and Arm of the Aggressor.
I was done with the raids I wanted to do so I asked the party if there were some raids they wanted and to vote. I noticed more than one person interested in a HoX, and asked if we have the required roles. Devil did some changes to get his intim up and Sybyla insinuated that he could charm. Wamdalee also mentioned something about druid past lives and having the augment summoning necklace, but I decided to go with Sybyla. Pony wanted to play tank heals and since I’m rebuke I stayed in center for most of the run. I was pleased when I managed to insta kill one of the trash mobs that entered center. The first charm ran out before Xyxxy’s shield went down and we waited for two more stones (you get 4 in the first run, with only 3 puppies) before the puppies were recharmed. After charming them the second time it took but a moment for the shield to go down and soon after the raid completed. Tahlua left the group before the raid due to being on timer, but I left the spot open for a potential last raid of the night.
Pony wanted to do Fire on Thunderpeak and even though it was late and I was bit sleepy I was down for doing a quick fotp. I invited Tahlua back and put the lfm up for the free spots. I didn’t realise that we might have not flagged people in the group and had to recall to reset the instance. Once we had a full group I stepped in to wait. I believe Snow and Simlock were supposed to do dragons, but soon after I started shooting at Nevalarich he aggro’d on me and the aggro switched between me and Derrit. As we got to the part with the 300% boost to damage that switch between them I fail to heal myself fast enough and die. For the rest of the raid I try to mainly raise and heal while letting the party focus on dps. Even though we had quite a few deaths, the raid felt quick and easy – there was never any pause in dps, but the raid continued to progress even with people dying and we completed in 18 minutes. Except for the guaranteed flogs, Dethek Runestone and Dragon Masque dropped.
At this point it was 2.30 in the morning for me and I was done for the night.
I thanked the party and logged off.
That’s all for raids 99.
Thank you for stopping by.
Micki's Delirium 
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