I've been doing terrible in groups lately. Just terrible.
See, I spent a few weeks spending all my non-raid time getting my smithing
up. So while everyone else was getting to 65 and getting lots of AA, I was
farming shrieking substances and the like. Then, after I got my smithing up
to GM level, I spent time making Heraldic armor, both for profit and for
guild members. Just last week I made 11 different pieces for people in our
alliance of guilds.
So late Friday night, after getting home from a session of D&D, I log in and
decide to join a Bastion of Thunder group. For the life of me, I can't keep
people alive. It's not the mobs that are the problem: it's the pets. See,
the chanter and the mage have charmed mobs, then hasted them. Then charm
breaks and the mobs wreak holy hell on my groupmates and me. I'm told to
sit in various places, but no matter where I go, it always seems to be right
next to a pet just as its charm breaks. I simply can't keep everyone alive
with pet charms breaking while we have mobs in camp. This is evidently a
standard tactic in BoT - and I admit that the charmed mobs do impressive
damage. But with charm breaking every five minutes, we just can't seem to
keep our heads above water. It's rez after rez, and I can't help but feel
inadequate because evidently other clerics don't have this problem. I
finally find a replacement and camp for the night.
The next day I log in and do another group, this time in the Plane of
Tactics. This involves - you guessed it - charmed, hasted pets. Again,
charm keeps breaking; again, the pets go on a killing spree; again, I can't
seem to keep everyone alive. Everyone's getting frustrated - me more so
than anyone - and it's with relief that we heed the message that raiding is
about to start and to make our way over to BoT. Something's wrong, I've
lost some touch, some ability to juggle multiple healing priorities in a
high-pressure environment. I need to group more to get that edge back or
something.
Our first mob today will be Agnarr. We've killed him once before, using
tactics that have to be classified as zerg-like - the clerics kept rezzing
folks over and over again, and it took an incredibly long time to beat him
down and kill him. We tried one other time and failed utterly.
This time, we act like professionals. We kill the first guy - I've never
learned his name because he's never presented a problem. On Emmerick, the
chanters all charm a mob and send it against Emmerick - our raid leader, in
listing out the Main Tank list, said "Pet, Pet, Pet, Pet, Tank01, Tank02".
In fact, there's a problem using the pets as a MT - I'm not sure what - and
I do end up having to heal a tank on Emmerick. Emmerick himself is
surrounded by whirling rocks - all the chanter pets. At one point, one of
the clerics in the cleric channels says, "I'm sending in my pet!" and all of
us do; there are at least seven cleric pets on Emmerick as well (which also
shows how unstressful the healing situation was). Emmerick goes down with
only a couple of deaths. Then we move on to Agnarr, and again we act like
we know what we're doing. The raid splits in two to destroy the portals.
Someone kites Agnarr around until we have the portals destroyed and the
chanters have charmed a few pets. This is a little messier in the beginning
and we have a few deaths, but we recover. We engage Agnarr, take care of
the periodic adds, and in no time he's down. Nothing zerg-like about this
kill; it was clean and quick.
Thus emboldened, we move on to Bertoxx. The Bertoxx ring has completely
owned us. The first time, we got to the four kings and wiped. The second
time, we got to Bertoxx, who then proceeded to waste us when he put out
damage that far outpaced our healing strategy. The third time, Bertoxx
despawned just as we pulled him - we took too long getting to him. So we
haven't had a good track record on Bertoxx.
This time, we end up owning the Bertoxx ring. The mobs fall quickly and
easily. The kings are dispatched with nary a problem. Sure, there's the
odd death or three along the way, but nothing approaching zerg levels. When
the last of the kings are dispatched with and Bertoxx spawns, we have thirty
minutes left on the ring timer. We have the luxury of making sure everyone
is good and ready. We pull Bertoxx, and I and the other clerics spam fast
heals on the Main Tank. To my minor amazement, it works; he stays alive
despite taking incredible damage. I also am burning through mana at an
incredible rate, and when I hit 20 mana I switch back to Complete Heals.
The MT stays up, Bertoxx's health drops quickly, and soon Bertoxx is dead -
an alliance first. There is much rejoicing.
What's next? Why, Mithaniel Marr of course! We tried him once before but
ended up wiping before we got halfway to his room. We gave up after that -
it was late at night. It's pretty late now, but we're still over 60 strong
as we head into the Temple of Marr. This time we have no problems getting
to MM's throne room. The word goes out - "All to left corner." So there we
go - and while trying to clear the throne room of mobs so we can pull MM,
repops behind us aggro through the wall. A train of seven mobs comes
swarming. I actually sit and type /camp, but I get up ten seconds later
when it appears the chanters have it under control. We have a few deaths
but it doesn't quite classify as a wipe. After rezzing, the word goes out -
"All to right corner." Evidently no mobs to aggro through those walls.
The mobs in this room respawn quickly. We have to re-clear some of the
mobs. Wipe number one occurs when some people are standing too far out into
the room, and when our monks try to split Mith Marr off of some of his
guards, he instead aggros the raid. We're not ready for this but make a
game effort before dying. One of our officers is botting a cleric alt,
whose job it is to stay camped unless we need her. She's logged on and
rezzes the clerics who rez everyone else. Wipe number two happens when we
get repops in the corner while we're still recovering from wipe number one.
A monk trains off the repops and we rez back in, get buffed up, kill the
repops, and once again begin clearing towards MM. Wipe number three occurs
when the pulling monk, again trying to split off the guards from MM, feign
death's too close to the raid.
By this time lots of people are frustrated and log off - it is rather late.
We still have a good raiding force left, though. A few of the clerics are
saying in the cleric channel that they can only stay for one more attempt.
We pull the mobs clear from Mith Marr, then we purposely wait for the corner
mobs to repop. When the last one falls, Mith Marr is immediately pulled.
He comes, and now that he's alone and we're ready for him, the clerics
manage to get into a healing rhythm. In fact, we manage to keep the Main
Tank alive all the way until Mith Marr is at three percent - at which point
the tank goes from 90 health to dead in half a second. No matter; rather
than switch to another tank we just all nuke MM, and down he goes.
This is terribly exciting. After a bad couple of weeks, in one day we get
two gods we've never killed before. We're very close to being able to try
Rallos Zek and getting flagged for the elemental planes. All we have to do
is kill Saryn - and she's easy, we've killed her before. It didn't count,
though, because we didn't kill the Keeper of Sorrows along the way.
Excitedly we all get our flags straightened out - we haven't been following
the scripts too closely, just killing mobs and hailing Planar Projections.
We hail someone in the Plane of Knowledge, who invites us to sit (she won't
do anything useful unless you say the key phrase while seated) and then
straightens our flags and lets us know where we stand. I have to hail a
couple of people, then I'm as far as I can be until we kill Saryn. Woot.
I log off, sleep, get up, do some stuff, then log on. I do some minor
chores in game until the word goes out: get to the Plane of Torment. We're
all still buzzing with excitement, and we have a tremendous turnout - 75
people, three more than a raid can handle. Two of the people in the raid
our from our server's resident uberguild - repayment for them letting us use
their CoH bots in Vex Thal until we had our own CoH bots in place. It is a
continuous process over the next few hours - someone will notice them and
ask, "What are people from Uberguild doing here?!" and get told it's okay,
they're here by design. We also have with us a 54 shaman, a person who used
to be in our guild with a 60 shaman, but decided to quit and allowed her
shaman to be sacrified for EE gems (which we used for Vex Thal keys) all the
way down to 46 before she deleted the character. A few weeks later she was
back. She started a new shaman and has been working hard. She's just
started raiding with us again and has gotten a few flags along the way. She
was with us when we killed Bertoxx and is here to help us get Saryn as well.
Up we go - and people can't help but make reference to the Drinal Flag
Rebellion. This is something a couple of people on Drinal have been
organizing: getting 200 people or thereabouts together to rush a flag-giving
mob and kill it. The DFR has killed A'D, Grummus, the Behemoth, Terris
Thule, and the HoH trial mobs. Alas, the changes in the LoY patch will make
the DFR a thing of the past. But it was great while it lasted; lots of
people got flagged for planes they may not have had a chance at for a long
time. Now, with our 75-person raid force rushing up the ramps of the Plane
of Torment, we almost feel the same way.
We kill mobs without breaking a sweat. We get to Ta'grush, the guy who
quads for 3500. The clerics talk about spamming fast heals, and I tell them
it won't make a difference. Neither will the Main Tank list the raid leader
is producing. With as few hitpoints as this guy has, it's not worth
bothering trying to keep people alive, just burn him fast. I tell people to
use Lifeburn and Manaburn and what-have-you and we'll be all right. In
fact, I chain-nuke myself, but my nuke has such a long recycle time that I
only get two nukes off before he falls. We rez the dead and move on.
We get to the room of Maareq the Prophet. This is what kept us from being
effectively flagged last time. See, when Maareq dies, there's an
untargetable mob in a cage that becomes targetable after Maareq is killed.
You hail him and he ports you to a maze where you kill the Keeper of
Sorrows - but only if you've killed Bertoxx. Last time, no one had killed
Bertoxx, so we skipped the KoS and moved on to Saryn. This time we mean to
do better.
We move up to the platform where Maareq is. Our raid leaders tell everyone
not to hail the guy in the cage until given the go-ahead. We engage Maareq,
we kill, he's easy, no problem. While some people stand around on the
platform, a few rush over to the cage where the now-targetable guy is
standing. I go over there as well, but instead of crowding into the cage as
everyone else seems to be, I go underneath it and sit, preparing to recover
mana and wait for the next step.
What happens next is slowly reconstructed over the course of the next hour.
One of the monks in our alliance hails the NPC in the cage. He then utters
the trigger phrase "I am ready", thinking this will port him (and only him)
to the Keeper of Sorrows maze. What it does is causes the NPC to cast an
Area of Effect translocate. Everyone who's close to the cage and flagged
for Bertoxx gets ported to the maze. Everyone who's *not* flagged "resists"
the TL. One of the people who is in range is a beastlord. He's killed
Bertoxx, so he gets TL'd - but his warder resists the TL. The warder treats
the attempted TL as a detrimental spell and attacks the NPC. The NPC dies.
All I know is that suddenly I'm surrounded by mobs and confused players.
The mobs begin killing folks until everyone recovers their wits and we take
them down. I rez a couple of people and everyone begins yelling. The end
result of all of the above shennanigans is that only about 20 or so people
have been ported to the KoS maze. The other 50 are stuck in Maareq's room,
with no way to get here. A GM is petitioned, and in the mean time
recriminations are flying. Some of our European players have been up
literally all night, and are livid that their chance to get flagged has been
taken away from them. The non-European players are plenty mad too, and even
I make a couple of snide comments about people who can't listen to or follow
directions. Finally, one of the alliance officers yells at everyone to shut
up or get TL'd out of the zone. Somewhat to my amazement, we respond -
partly in response to the threat, and partly, I think, because we've said
everything that needs to be said. A GM responds fairly quickly but is
unable to help us, just as we feared.
Those of us who are in the maze tentatively ask if we're still going to try
KoS. My guild leader, who was one of the twenty, makes a quick assessment.
Two shamans, two chanters, and one cleric - as in guess who. He decides
it's enough to try, and with a sense of foreboding we begin clearing the
maze. However, the mobs are easy to kill, and the Keeper of Sorrows is a
complete wuss. We kill him quite handily. We hail the NPC that spawns and
get our flag. The KoS drops a nice CLR DRU SHM cloak, and my guild leader
asks who wants in on it. When no one responds, he asks each of us priest
types by name if we want it. I don't - although it's a nice back piece, I
already have a better one. So the 54 shaman, who was one of the twenty,
gets to loot it. She's ecstatic - by far her best piece, and not one you
often find on a mid-50's type.
We port back to Maareq's room, where 50 grumpy people are waiting for us.
We move up to Saryn and quickly engage her. She's as easy as we expected
her to be, despite losing a couple of tanks because of clerics getting
silenced. Down she goes, I hail the mob, then gate out even before loot is
awarded. Time to get flagged.
I run back to the Plane of Tranquility and hail an NPC to finish the Saryn
part of the script. Then I run to the library and take the elevator up to
the top and hail the Grand Librarian. I get a flag, and in my rush to get
back down I don't bother to wait for the elevator. Instead I run up to the
edge, cast Divine Aura, and jump back down. It's only after I've jumped off
the edge that I notice the message "Your spell was interrupted." Oops.
Fortunately I get rezzed by another alliance cleric who was on his way to
get flagged. I loot and run to the Plane of Tranquility. I run around
looking for the entrance to the Tower of Solusek Ro, and am finally told
it's the middle stone of the bunch that leads to the Plane of Valor, the
Halls of Honor, etc. Eagerly I run up and click the stone - and nothing
happens. I ask, and am told I was supposed to hail the Librarian a second
time and ask "What information?". I run back to the library, ride up the
elevator, ask the right question, and get another flag. I manage to do this
quickly enough so that I can jump down the elevator shaft without taking too
much damage. I run back, run to PoTranq, then run to the stones and click
on the middle one.
This time I get ported into the Tower of SolRo. It's a creepy,
gothic-looking place. There's a white-con mob right in front of me that
sees invis, so I don't move. A few other people zone in and, in fact, one
immediately tries to kite a mob and become the first person in our alliance
to die in Sol Ro. He gets dragged to me and I rez him. The call is being
given to head to Ssra to kill Emp. Still, those of us inside are a curious
bunch, and we quickly group up to try and kill one mob. We pull one, he has
a lot of hitpoints but doesn't do extraordinary damage or have any
extraordinary spells that he casts. He falls, and I watch my AAXP and see
that I get two percent AAXP from this one kill. Cool.
We gate to Twilight Sea and run to Ssra. Emp seems old hat to me now, but
he still has nice loot. We have a messy start when one of the Crowd Control
paladins goes linkdead right at the start of the pull and another paladin
dies as a result, but we recover, get CC under control, then kill Emp with
no fuss. After loot is awarded, we AE TL out of there.
I appear in the Nexus and say into the alliance channel, "LFG in Sol Ro!"
(In retrospect, perhaps not a good thing to say when lots of people didn't
get flagged under such lousy circumstances. No one said a word about it,
though. I hope no one was offended.) A few others are on the way. We zone
in and group up. We begin pulling, and the XP rate is steady - two percent
AAXP per kill. The mobs are on a slow respawn timer, so we begin crawling
inside the Tower. We make it to the second floor, which has some incredible
architecture. We begin moving in deeper when we somehow aggro three mobs
that wipe us. No worries; one of the people in the party is a Shadowknight
and she summons our corpses. It's getting late, and I opine that now would
be a good time to quit. But one person is 9 percent away from an AAXP ding,
another is 5 percent away, and another is 13 percent away. I laugh and say
that staying for seven more mobs is all right. We begin pulling again, and
seven mobs later three people have dinged an AA point. This is the same XP
I was getting in BoT or PoTactics, without the stress of having to worry
about pets killing me or other party members. Plus we have the whole zone
to ourselves - no worries about fighting for mobs or getting trained.
That's nice.
So, after a long, hectic weekend, I now have a new, quiet place to go with a
group to XP. =) And, more importantly, we are just about ready to give
Rallos Zek the Warlord a try. All we need to do is get a few more people
flagged, and we'll have just about caught up with our resident uberguild.
Heck, maybe in time *we'll* be the uberguild. =) That's an interesting
thought.
One step at a time, though. RZtW, we're coming for you.
--
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon of Rodcet Nife
Winter's Light
Drinal server
This page is Copyright by Skaarak; Everquest (TM) is property of Sony Online Entertainment
All stories and art work are Copyright@ by the origial owner/writer.
Most, if not all stories, were taken from newsgroup alt.games.everquest (AGE), I recommend that anyone who gets a chance to read it should!