Last week Saturday I was ready to log early, but decided to wait a little and log on at 9 pm my time (3 pm EST). Tahlua and Blackzombie were on when I logged, so I invited them before posting the lfm. After the lfm went up with “R1/LE/LH depending on group” (for baba’s), the group filled in 10 minutes. Erofen sent a tell wanting to join, so we waited inside the raid while he was switching. Since we had both Titus and Stitchz in the group (tanks), I felt confident in R1. The plan was for them to dual-tank, since tanking only one shambler instead of two makes things easier for the tank. Once everyone was in we started. At first someone else had the hut, but soon it switched to me, and I spent the rest of the first baba fight pinned next to the barrier. As for inside the hut, this week I actually chose the teams. Since I at the time when I selected teams didn’t know which char Ero would bring, we ended up with three insta killers for totems (two warlocks and me), while I think the other side had one. This meant my side was slightly faster at killing things, but we didn’t really have to wait too long. Puzzles completed quickly, second baba fight also went well and the second run through we didn’t get wisps, which made things a lot easier. Or at least my side didn’t get wisps.
When we got to the last part, after wisps were taken out and we started taking out the red crows, I happened to aggro two and got smacked to death (might have been a spell). I asked the party to wait for me to get up before attacking baba – which wasn’t really needed since my death timer was up before they were done with the reds. After reds we did our best to move baba as far north as we could, but she seemed to just refuse to move beyond a point so I told the party to just attack her. When the shamblers spawned, this time the tanks managed to grab aggro without either of them running off and attacking the party. The rest was smooth and easy and we finished in 57 min – of which some was the waiting at start. Everyone got 125 Hut Runes and 24 Threads of Fate and Memory of a Tailor’s Duress dropped.
Then it was time for Strahd. Stitchz left and Titus was our remaining tank so I asked them to choose difficulty. Titus was interested in R1, but I was was feeling a bit unsure on the ability of the party so we ended up stepping in on LE. Before this I had an lfm up for the last two spots and they were filled quickly. I grabbed one trinket, Narguul the other and Titus asked Tahlua to grab the sunsword. In the first fight against Rahadin and the shadows we noticed our dps was a bit low, the fight took longer than it should have, but we pushed through. As we got to the stairs someone got gripped just outside the door, so I asked for a d-door to go get them. When we got back the group hadn’t gotten too far so it was easy to catch up. As for the stairs, we had two trappers, but some traps were missed, trappers died, some fell, etc. It was quite messy. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said “I’m not progressing until this trap has been disabled, and I can’t rescue anyone with the trinket from here” (maybe not exactly in those words). Several had progressed past an undisabled trap and I had no intention of trying my luck on it. As for dying and waiting out death timers, when we got to the red named shadows someone spawned them too soon, so Titus grabbed them and moved them down the stairs instead of us fighting by the barrier. Since the stairs were being difficult and some were unsure about our chances of completion, I asked the group if anyone wanted us to restart. I got no votes at all for that, while I, Tahlua and Zombie were all for testing how far we’d get. As we were getting ready to enter the heart I got gripped and died and we waited for me and others to get up before stepping in. The heart fight went surprisingly well with only a few deaths. Zombie stayed behind again while the rest of us d-doored, shrined and spread out by the doors.
The plan was as always to find the cards and light the torches in order, but just as I expected, skulls spawned and killed us before we could do that. As dead we took some time to come up with a plan. We made a list of where the cards are and checked who could get which (most had some kind of self raise, e.g. Jibber’s). I was too far away from most cards, but decided to use my Jibber’s to go help, but the cards finished before I got to any. Waited to die near the party and then waited for the death timer. As we wait outside the door, someone gets gripped and dies. We wait for everyone to get up, then step in with the plan that Lubash deals with brides, Tahlua and Titus tank Strahd. Things are going well until Lubash dies and brides are lose. Now I don’t remember the exact order, but with me trying to keep everyone up as well as Titus and Tahlua and throwing the occasional raise, both Tahlua ans Titus dropped, though not at the same time. At one point we had several party members down, so I told the ones still alive to just kite for now, don’t worry about dps, just kite so we can get everyone back up. As for the rest, Titus grabbed both strahd and brides, which made healing more challenging since brides do a lot of damage. Things worked out though and we completed in 74 minutes. We waited a bit for one out of two dc’d people before looting. Everyone got 125 Strahd Runes and 26 Threads of Fate and Divinity, the Morninglord’s Goal and Echo of the Tome of Strahd dropped.
We lost about half the party after Strahd and I posted for KT normal. We stepped in while party was gathering and ended up waiting something like 10 minutes inside before starting. There was some discussion on who should do what and I wanted Titus to tank dragon and Morti offered to heal. I said for Lubash, Merficio and of course Titus and Morti to start on dragon while the rest of us did drop downs. I guess there was some confusion, though, as I guess they weren’t dps’ing the dragon at first. We completed the drop down rooms quickly and headed to the dragon. I realised the map I did last week wasn’t correct, 1.2 is supposed to be the larger island to the north west, the dragon never lands on the small one north west. We had some deaths, the dragon was jumping around a bit, but I felt that people payed attention to the trash (once I pointed it out) and trash was dying. When we got to the first rift there was some confusion about who should enter and who should stay with dragon – everyone who was supposed to enter the rift didn’t.
The first rift is the easiest one, though, and it didn’t matter that some were left out. We completed and headed back to the dragon for the second dragon fight. In fight before the second and third rift you get rift parasites that can be quite nasty if not killed fast enough. We noticed this and started killing them off as soon as they spawned. In the second rift Tahlua was our boss fight and Snow the shadow kiter. One of the shadows aggro’d on the party and I died, I think Lubash who had prepped to tank shadows stepped in and moved the shadow from the group. I got a raise and we completed the fight without more issues. When we got to the third rift the party had managed to organize itself and I believe everyone who was supposed to stepped into the rift. Someone moved forward before we were ready though and the fight started a bit soon. Outside Titus got a lot of stacks of.. I don’t know what it is, storm magic? And dropped, but got a raise quickly and the ritual never continued. We completed the rift without any bigger issues and headed back to wait for completion and loot. The raid completed in 56 minutes (waiting included) and I believe we got runes and threads. Ring of the Silver Tongue, Clouded Dreams and Mail of the Mroranon dropped.
I wanted to do RSO ans posted for “probably normal”. I’ve come to like normal runs since I can use turn undead on the skellies. Nep asked who he should follow and I suggested my guildies Tahlua or Zombie. I planned to run off solo the the west side. The raid filled quite quickly this time and I even had to turn someone away who wanted to join since the last spot got reserved just before they hit the lfm. I do first come first served, except for friends, which includes people sending tells asking to reserve a spot. The first part fighting the skellies and completing puzzles finished quite fast, as did the dragon fight. For side puzzles, most went east and south, I and some others went west and started working our way to the south puzzles. I did a few puzzles on the way, including one of the south west ones. We gathered at the shine before heading back to the dragon. I called out ellies, symbols and white circles, but over all the the fight went well. We completed in 27 minutes and Gauntlets of the Aggressor dropped. I also believe everyone got 64 Kor Kaza Runes and 19 Threads of Fate.
It was quite late for me when we completed RSO, but I had had coffee and wasn’t feeling tired so was down for one more raid. I suggested Defiler and it got some support so I switched to Maidae and posted. I wanted to run Maidae since she was about 200k from capping and doj is a bit lover level than the other raids we did. On clicking the quest giver we noticed that the selection for entering the raid was missing. The only options was to trade runes and “Close window”. Some thought their chars were bugged and relogged or switched, but we quickly found that clicking close window opened the quest window. This was before update 41 patch 1, it might have been fixed since then. Since I felt we had a good group, I wanted to try R1. I did forget to organize the party and select teams, though, and I felt we were a bit slow on taking out executioners and people were pulling reinforcements on us when fighting executioners. When we were hit with crippling lag we quickly failed since too many reinforcements had a chance to spawn.
Genlisea decided to drop group and I posted for a retry. Runestone suggested teams and I asked if he wanted to do them. A druid joined and Rune came up with teams. I stepped in quickly as not to get the same instance as before. If you take too long to re-enter, the instance counter resets to i2049 – which is the first instance you get. Second try, with teams worked a lot better than the first one and we also got a lot less lag. This time we managed to rescue all the archons, killed all the executioners, killed the snake and then the boss. The raid completed in 21 minutes and was my very first reaper completion of this raid. The previous try lagged out and we didn’t try again. Loot wise we got Ultimatum, Countenance and Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier, but everyone was also supposed to get runes and threads of fate since update 41 – which didn’t happen. I think I saw someone get treads, but no runes dropped. Hoping this was fixed in the patch.
It was now past 3 in the morning for me and time for bed.
That’s all for raids 101.
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Micki's Delirium 
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