AMOV Special: Naxxramas: The Fall of Naxxramas

Well it took 2 weeks but AMOV returned to the 10 man raid which once humbled them to. Did we finally clear it or was it another occasion to be put down to a learning curve?

Been here before...



Starting with the Arachnid quarter again, we quickly progressed through there, the plague quarter and up to Grobbulus in the Construct Quarter and also up to the 4 horsemen in the Military quarter. I won't bore you with the details on those boss' again (you can see earlier Naxx postings in the sidebar) but my personal highlights was getting the T7 Hunter shoulders from Loatheb, Hatestrike from Patchwerk, doing the "AMOV Gothik Strat" (tm) and participating in one of the longest ever heigan fights! I died but not from an inability to dance...!!

The core raiders were unchanged but a couple people couldn't make it this time so we had to get in a few "randoms." Unlike the first time we were also lacking any replenishment (no Gloam - our Ret Paladin) and we also didn't use any Flasks - to mana was a big issue for me on boss fights! Things should be better in 3.1 though :)

Anub Rekhan (wws)


Grand Widow Faerlina (wws)

Maexxna (wws)


Noth the Plaguebringer (wws)


Heigan the unclean (wws) - 15 mins 57 secs!


Loatheb (wws)


Patchwerk (wws)

Instructor Razuvious (wws)


Gothik the Harvester (wws)

Grobbo

After 4 failed attempts on our previous run we were a little scared of this boss but those 4 previous attempts were far from wasted, upon returning to Naxx we were much more efficient and wiped once but on our 2nd attempt we downed Grobbulus in 4 mins 25.


Gluth



Next up was Gluth. This fight isn't too difficult but everyone needs to be on the ball. Starting above the room, everyone drops in and immidetely aggro's the boss on landing, so it's important to make sure the main tank goes in first, then the OT, Healers & DPS and the kiter last. The tanks tank Gluth against a door on one side of the room and have to switch tanks when they get too many debuffs. Meanwhile, the designated kiter has to kite the adds which come away from Gluth as if one reaches him he'll get all his health back. These adds come with approx 500k HP so they can't be killed either, until Gluth does his decimate spell which drops everyone in the raid and the adds to 5% of their HP - at which point everyone nukes the adds. This cycle keeps going until Gluth dies and also Gluth has a soft enrage which can be cancelled with a hunters Tranquilizing shot or a rogues Anesthetic Poison.

I've killed this boss in a few random PuGs and I've always played the kiter. This time a DK (they are well suited to this) - wanted to do it by the name of Tyraxor, as he said he had done it hundreds of times - so we went with that.

Attempt 1: From the strat above, falling in the right order is pretty essential. I'm not sure what went wrong but a healer was first to get aggro and died immidetely so we were down to 9 men for the entire first attempt. Off we went - I was using Tranq shot when necessary and also dropping frost traps down to help the DK. A few mins in I heard "Kiter is down" across Vent - oh crap I though....I turned around to take over kiting but one mob got through and Gluth got all his HP back. Wipe.

Attempt 2: Falling in the correct order, Gluth was correctly tanked and killed with no player deaths in 3 mins 39 secs. Good stuff.

Thaddius


And then we were on the last boss of the construct quarter: Thaddius. This is meant to be one of the harder boss fights in Naxx but I quite enjoy it. To start with you have to seperate into 2 groups and kill 2 mobs within 5 seconds of each other (easier than it sounds), make a jump to Thaddius and start attacking him but watching for your "charge" - and making sure you're with similarly charged people as crossing them can cause some pretty big damage. When fighting the 2 mini-boss' before Thaddius, the tanks get switched around - something I forgot to tell everyone in our tactic chat before attacking him...

Heloko: "Why can't I heal Asaron?"
Mynnx: "Why can't I heal Destromath?"
Valilor: "Oh yeah...one more thing...."

It didn't take much for the healers to correct themselves and we quickly dispatched of the 2 mini-boss' within a second of each other. Next was the jump I told everyone about a couple of times.

Valilor Jumps. Valilor Misses. /Facepalm

Pretty embarassing for the person giving out the strats to mess this bit up...and when returning to Thaddius I also had the wrong charge on the wrong side. Much pain. Being a few people's first attempt at Thaddius there was much to learn and we wiped after 1 min 36 secs.

Attempt 2 was much better, after 3 mins 7 secs and no player deaths, Thaddius and the construct quarter fell to the force of AMOV! Just the 4 Horsement to go and we would be on the final straight....


4 Horsemen

We only used 2 healers up to this point and we knew from our previous run that it would be hard with 2. At first we tried to put to people who could self-heal at the back and keep the 2 healers at the front. At the back was a Enhansement Shaman (Xeus - Formely Cumulonimbus if you're following the guild) and 'lock called Cezil. They did an alright job but the damage was too much for them to self-heal through with the healers at the front...and as soon as one of them died, we wiped (the open Boss nukes the whole raid hard). We also tried it with Mynnx the druid healer using a HoT before the fight started but again, no use. We really needed 3 healers.

Xeus rather kindly volunteered to respec as healer and we also changed things around a little, I went to the back to tank one of the boss' and Cezil stayed on the other. Mynnx came to the back to heal and Heloko and Xeus stayed at the front. After one more wipe as we got to grips with the new tactic, we did it! The military quarter was down and AMOV was on the final straight of Naxxramas.


Sapphiron



After clearing the 4 quarters, 2 boss' remain in Naxx, both Sapphiron and KT. To access them, you return to the start and go through a different portal - one which you also can't go back through so make sure everyone is summoned before you do so!

The Sapphiron encounter looks pretty cool, his skeletons renamiates and you spend the rest of the fight putting it back to how you found it! There's 2 phases to this fight which keep cycling, Sapp on on the ground and Sapp in the air.

While on the ground Sapphiron needs to be tanked facing away from the raid while the raid attack him from his side (he does a tail swipe). While this is going on he also cast's a Blizzard, much like a Mage's but much bigger so the DPS/Healers need to keep out of them. Sapphiron also casts a life drain curse which needs to be removed ASAP as it both hurts the target and heals Sapp. After every 45 seconds phase 2 begins where Sapphiron takes to the skies.

While in the air, Sapphiron will cast Blizzard but also freeze 2 players in the 10 man raid and turn them into ice. When this happens, everyone has to group behind them to avoid Sapp's Frost Breath, which is similar to the Arcane explosion you have to hide from in the Oculus.

And that's about it.

One thing which can happen is that you all group behind an ice cube only for the Blizzard to start hitting you at that spot - you can't get away of you'll get hit with Frost Breath so you just have to hope it can be healed through...obviously at the cost of the healers mana.

Our first 2 attempts were wipes with Sapp being at exactly 58% HP exactly but we carried on and attempt 3 was a clear! From the Sapphiron drops, I managed to win the roll for the Key to the Focusing Iris, which will let me open up the Eye of Eternity (Malygos) raid when the time comes.

Asaron, the guild's main tank also had a nice drop here for him, the massive skeletal ribcage. Also interested in this was our brand new OT recruit Nynth. AMOV don't operate a DKP system, everyone has a fair roll on their main spec if it's an upgrade. Asaron rolled first..94! Surely that upgrade was his, right?

-I'm sure that blue chest is still good though :p

Kel'Thuzad


For anyone keeping up to date with my blog/twitter, you'll know that before this run I only had KT and Malygos to go, so I was pretty happy to finally get this far with the guild! It also means that finally everyone in AMOV has pretty much got as far as me as far as content is concerned as we've cleared all the heroics, VoA and OS - so soon we might be rolling out with the "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" titles, sweet! Almost as long as our guild name too (Aggro My Own Vegetables). Long names/titles FTW!

So on to KT. This fight has 3 stages, the first you have to deal with adds, the seconds is KT and the third is KT with some more adds in a bit of a DPS race. I don't want to bore you with the strategy as it can take a while to type but it can be found here.

So how did we do?

We started this fight at 00:32 am and after clearing some pretty difficult boss' we were all tired and also had to get up early for work the next day. We thought we'd give it a go though....and unfortunately we wiped. It was a good first attempt, we wiped after 7 mins during the seconds phase when 3 people got caught out standing too close together. We then agreed to meet again the next day to finally finish Naxx.

The next day we regrouped, we had a few different faces but the core was pretty much the same. Back to KT we went and after 10 mins 42 secs we one-shotted him!


Most of KT's loot table is pretty good and one item I wanted actually dropped....the Gem of Imprisoned Vassals...a nice upgrade to my current neck but alas, I didn't win the roll. The Neck went to Ultradeath. If he also gets a Proto-Drake drop from the Mysterious Eggs before me I'll....I'll....not be best pleased.

So there we have it, AMOV has cleared Naxx 10! Coming from the Burning Legion server, we were only a very small guild who had only cleared a few heroics pre-Wotlk but wow look how we've grown! VoA/OS would always have been achieveable but for the first time we've cleared a multi-boss raid within a week, which is great as it's quite a time contraint for our "Casual Hardcore" guild.

So what now? I think the answer is obvious..... Malygos and the Eye of Eternity! Once that big blue monstrosity falls we'll have cleared the pre-Uludar content.....and will be Champions of the Frozen Wastes!

Victory Lap

Straight after here, with the raid reset coming up we went straight for OS10. The non-AMOV raiders had left and we were left with 8. Feeling pretty confident we went with those 8 and it worked! DING! Less Is More! Took 6 mins 57 seconds.

Is there anything we can't do?? :D