Friday 20 March 2009

AMOV Special: Naxxramas: The Construct and Military Quarters

Arachnid: Done
Plague: Done

Onto the construct quarter!

Gear Check!


Before entering the construct quarter, make you're all repaired (if no repair bot is available) and have a good supply of arrows, as if you need to leave Naxx for any of those, joining your raid again can be a pain because of the respawning slime (which needs most of the raid to kill so you can rejoin).

There's lots of trash in big groups in Naxx to deal with and you know what that means.....VOLLEY!

11,505 DPS? Thank you please

After dealing with the trash, we came to our first boss, the infamous Patchwerk.

"
The fight is often referred to as a "gear check" - tanks need to be able to survive the huge damage output, healers need to be able to heal almost constantly and DPS need to put enough DPS out to beat the Enrage timer." (Wowhead)

I think that pretty much sums the fight up. The healers will only be healing the melee classes, the ranged DPS/Healers shouldn't be getting hit at all in this fight. His main 2 abilities are hateful strike, which he uses every second to hit the player with the highest health in melee range and beserk - Patchwerk's enrage timer which will wipe the raid after 6 mins.

With the majority of AMOV geared in heroic gear (apart from maybe Heloko, Ultradeath and I) this would be a good test of how we're doing gear wise...and after 4 mins 23 seconds we passed! Patchwerk, being a single target boss which doesn't require you to move is known as the "DPS test" to see how good your DPS is. Here's the report: WWS Patchwerk



From the above you can see that Dave still misses a bit even though I'm "hit capped." This is because I reached the cap by using a point in Focused Aim which does not pass onto my pet. Since this run, I've adjusted my talents and gear a little, I've swapped out Bjarngrim Family Signet for the ring of Scarlett Shadows which has less AP & Haste but it has more hit. This took me to the hit cap with only gear so now my pets will be hit capped so no more miss' and I have a free talent point to play with, which I put in Unleashed Fury, taking it to rank 2 (of 5). Next time I face patch it should be interesting to see if this makes a big improvement.

H(N)axx


We defeated Patchwerk at 23:25pm, it was getting late but we moved on to the next boss Grobbulus. He is strange, he has no face just a tube connecting to his chest....what's the point in that? If I was him I'd just roll over and die...

While on a good day he could probably only see his own liver, his abilities require the whole raid to be on the ball though, otherwise it'll be a wipe fest. Grobbulus' abilities require him to be tanked around the room to keep out of his Poison Cloud. Every 20 seconds (and more frequently as the fight goes on) he casts Mutating Injection on a player at random, which when the effect kicks in will make the player drop an AoE around them, possibly wiping the raid so they have to run away from the group, drop the AoE and then return. For the rest of the fight the melee DPS have to attack Grobbulus from the side, the Tank tanks him around the room and the ranged/healers stand in the middle unless someone gets the mutating injection. Grobbulus also has a 12 min enrage timer. Oh and he summons slime add's at certain times which will need to be OT'd and nuked by the DPS. Plenty to do then.

So in AMOV went, following the tactics as described but we didn't keep control of the slimes well enough. Every person that gets hit infront of Grobbulus will create a slime - and when they are killed they leave a poison cloud. By the end of the run too many people were hit this way and the floor was covered in poison clouds. Even with that problem it was our best attempt at Grobbulus and after 6mins 30 we wiped and annoying Grobbulus was on less than 100k HP!

Attempt 2 was funny, not really an attempt but it's classed as one in WWS so I'll count it! We all ran back after the first wipe, started healing/buffing up when a rogue Mirror Image from Rosencrantz either was over confident, brave or just stupid and engaged Grobbulus by himself...this attempt lasted 22 seconds in which time Gloam, Cumulonibus, Deadcreepy and Rosencrantz died. I can't say anything about this as I'm sure my pet control has wiped enough parties in the past.

Attempt 3 lasted 3 mins 25. I can't remember what happened on this run (a problem when you blog about it too many days later) but not as good as our first attempt. The time was now 00:02am and we decided to give it one last try...

Attempt 4 was another good attempt. We were going well, tanking the adds, running out of the group when we had the injection and Grobbulus knew this...that's why he used another ability which wasn't mentioned anywhere online...HAXX! First of all we lost Ultradeath - one DPS down, disconnected half way through the battle. Harsh. Next went Heloko - A key healer - he was still on vent but disconnected, only to come back near the end with UI problems - he could only see his own group. We wiped after 8 mins 09 seconds.

Ultradeath disconnected :(

And there we ended the day, to return tomorrow. Day 1 report here. Don't worry, you don't need to wait till tomorrow as tomorrow is already here!


Tomorrow

We arranged to continue on the Monday evening but before entering Naxx we thought we'd have a bit of fun with Succi as he wasn't in our raid group yet because he was Arena-ing.

*While outside Naxx in Dragonblight*
Heloko: "Ok, Asaron pull now"
Asaron: "Ok"
Valilor: "Wait! Let me cast MD"
*We were doing nothing of the sort obviously*
Succi: "Huh? What's going on?"
Heloko: "OMG Succi, where are you? You're on adds!"
Valilor: "Oh oh"
Succi: "What? You've started?"
Heloko: "Yup...where are you?"
Succi: "Hang on...it doesn't say your in Naxx in the social panel?"
Asaron: "There's lag between where we are and when the panel updates, that's why you can't see where we are."
Succi: "Oh crap ;( "
*Couple of mins pass*
Heloko:"FFS Succi, where were you? You were on adds!"
Asaron: "Wipe :("

LOL - Not word for word perfect but pretty much the gist of what happened. Succi's been after a title for a while now and it looks like he finally has one: Succi the Gullible!

So after that little bit of fun we all met at the summoning stone in Naxx, or so we thought...where was Cumulonimbus? We were 1 healer down when we entered Naxx for day 2 so we thought we'd give the construct quarter a miss, it was pretty close with 10 so we went for the military quarter as the first couple of boss' are meant to be easier.

Instructor Razuvious


The first boss in the Military quarter is a very hard hitting instructor. The strategy here is for 2 tanks to mind control 2 other mobs next to the instructor and tank him with those...taking it in turns to tank as the mind control runs out and timing bone shield/taunt accordingly. Everyone else needs to hug the boss and hunters need to keep him at the min range (just outside of melee).

We attempted to 9 man it with 2 healers...it was hard work though, the two tanks were Succi who kept disconnecting at the most inappropriate times and Asaron, who plays with an XBox 360 controller (and mouse/keyboard). It didn't go too well and we wiped after one of the tanks died (reason unknown) after 2 mins 57.

For attempt 2 we thought we'd enter LFG for another healer. In came Mübarek a Paladin healer. He said "If we wipe I'm leaving" before we started - not a good sign for a healer. He was relatively well geared but went out of mana really early on in the fight and after 5 Mins 35 we wiped.

Attempt 3 we were back to 9 men but had the tactics down much better but possibly due to a Succi dissconnection we lost control of one of the tanks, who one-shotted Mynnx leaving us with 1 healer and we wiped after 6 mins 05. We knew we coud do it this time though, we just needed to stop any disconnections! It looks like Succi has earnt his second title on this run: Succi the Disconnector!

Attempt 4 = Success and also in 4 mins 31! Much better :D


Boss or Mob?


Next up was Gothik the harvester. Here you usually split into 2 groups and deal with the alive/undead side but when we entered the room no-one had read any tactics and Asaron noticed he only had around 800k HP so:

Asaron: "He only 800k HP, what a sissy!"
Heloko: "Go on then, Aggro him"
Asaron: "What are the tactics?"
Heloko: /Chicken
Asaron: "Don't make me!"

Asaron Engages Gothik!

All 9 of us were on one side, the death knights came, were promptly killed and they rose in spirit form, waiting for us on the other side. This went on for a few cycles until the doors separating the sides opened and a tide of mobs came! Chaos! Usually with all these adds I get volley out but I was too scared of the aggro so I just shot at Asaron's taget..it was mental! Gothik then came down to join in the fun, teleporting from one side to the other - completely pointlessly as the gates were open and we just nuked him into the ground (Usually the gates are closed and each group gets a go). What an easy boss! No tactics necessary...or maybe we can call this 9 man tactic "To AMOV it!"......Leeeeeeeerrrooooooyyyyy! [Report WWS Gothik]


Bear-Faced Cheek!

Between Gothik and the 4 Horsemen are some pretty tough trash mobs, so tough in fact that Valilor, Extra-Brave (apart from PvP) MM hunter has a chance of dying...and I did. What isn't too help full is when the feral druid comes to sit on your vunerable, helpless dead body and then for the resto druid to shift to a bear and sit on you too!

Once everyone was finished laughing, Heloko ressed me. I was in need of some healing......and a wash!



Apocalypse Now?


The last boss of the Military Quarter are the Four Horsemen. There's various tactics to use here but with 9 men and only 2 healers we were pretty limited. The four horsemen is arguably the hardest boss in Naxxramas as it needs the most co-ordination. For our first attempt we went for the strategy of using Gloam and Ultradeath to tank the rear ranged horsemen with Mynnx healing them and at the front Succi and Asaron tanked a boss each with the DPS nuking one of them at a time and Heloko healing. It started ok but we soon had problems with Heloko recieving the debuffs from both front boss' and then got one-shotted. With 9 men, one death = wipe and this was no different. 2 mins 13 in we wiped.

Attempt 2 we pulled Mynnx to the front and left no healers at the back, hopefully Gloam and Ultradeath could heal themselves through it but again we wiped after 1 min 40.

It was getting late now, attempt 2 ended at 00:24am but we decided to give it one more try. Using the same tactics as attempt 2 we wiped again after 1 min 10 secs. At 00:33am we decided to call it a night and that's where we left Naxx, AMOV's first attempt at Naxx was now complete - the reset coming just over a day later.

To be continued!

With 2 quarters cleared, most of the military and 1 boss from the construct, AMOV will return again - probably same time this week to re-run what we've already done and to hopefully get further this time! With the same 10 people, with no disconnections and a full turn out I have no doubt we can do it next time! A few people have also been running Heroics hectically since the Naxx run so we'll be better geared for our next Naxx attempt :D

Day 1 stats
Day 2 stats

2 comments:

  1. *Edited*

    Grobbulus attempt 1
    Gullible convo
    How the Gothik Pull happened

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