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

New Guildie!

Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic)

- Better off dead more like

4 AMOV guildies (Ultradeath , Valilor, Heloko & Rosentrantz - in height order) were online and looking to do some more heroic achievements. DTK looked like the next best bet (putting off Oculus as long as possible!) so off we went, we were just lacking 1 vital thing...a Tank!

I entered LFG, and asked for any tanks looking for an achievement run in / LFG, /trade and /general (I was in Dalaran) and nothing...until a whisper came in from Nynth. He said that he'd give it a go, was def capped but was also in a lot of blues/Lv70 epics and hadn't been there before - but being the gung-ho, equal opportunity people that we are, we gave him a chance.

First up in DTK was Consumption Junction. Here you have to tank Trollgore in a corner of the room so everyone is out of Line of sight when he does his Consume spell. Everyone caught in LoS when he does this grants him 1 stack of his consumption buff (including adds) - the achievement is to kill him before this gets to 10. The add were very weak, around 2k HP - easily controllable by 1 person but unfortunately we got the positioning wrong and he died with 17 stacks. D'oh! Looks like we'll be coming back...

Next up was Better of Dred. Here you have to kill 6 raptors with King Dred still active. We were a little worried about the warriors survivablity as King Dred hit's hard but Nynth had some pretty good skills and we managed to one-shot this achievement. Great! We were very impressed with his skills generally so we asked him if he wanted to join us, which he did, so it was win - win!

I guess the lesson to be learnt here is that undergeared people should be given a chance (unless there is some gear check somewhere) - especially people with high iLevel Lv70 gear, they obviously needed some skill to get that back in TBC so they obviously know what they're doing!

Mini Update

After a few unproductive days in WoW, yesterday was just the remedy!

Azjol-Nerub (Heroic)

Heloko, Ultradeath and myself went to AN chasing the 2 achievements which had so far eluded us; Watch Him Die and Hadronox Denied. Watch him die is probably one of the hardest to get and it was also first up. Here you have to kill the boss without killing any of the watchers.

Our first attempt was for me to try and kite all the mobs out of the boss room, up towards the entrance while everyone else nukes the boss ASAP. We gave this a try but I failed to kite them all up, some stayed behind and the group wiped. Ouch.

Our second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth attempt we tried another tactic, which eventually paid off. We pulled each group, one at a time, and killed the warriors/shadowcasters/skirmishers but left the watcher..the tank then picked these up and also the boss and we nuked him ASAP. This tactic needs a bit of luck and some good gear - anyone that gets webbed needs to be freed immediately and it's a touch task on the healer. Using Tranq shot on the the watcher gashra which enrages is pretty handy, I made a macro which auto targets it so I could fire it as soon as it was off Cooldown. We managed it on attempt six - we killed the boss and then wiped...but it was worth it!


The next achievement, Hadronox Denied, was a breeze compared to the last one. Using an exploit, I aggro'd the first group and FD'd, this reset the encounter so we could all run downstairs and take the boss down before any adds came. Easy.

- What happens when you don't take Succi

AN is now completely cleared! 2 more achievements down 14 to go :D

Obsidian Sanctum (25 Man)


After the successful AN run, the 3 of us joined a PuG to OS25.

Raid Leader: "Only 1 rule here: No Loot if you get hit by the magma wave."

Pretty hard rule but I've done this before without gettig hit so it wasn't impossible. A little worrying about what the PuG might be like though, when a RL comes out with rules like that in a PuG I usually assume the worst. That and his use of swearing didn't sit right.

Anyway, off we went, clearing the drakes from left to right and then onto Sarth. With the rule still fresh in my head I focused on not getting hit - which was probably to the expense of my DPS slightly but we killed him on our first attempt; I got to roll!

The usual non-hunter drops where there and then woah, the Fury of Five Flights was there! I rolled an 89.....and I won! The Leader took a while to respond and then said "I'll see if you got hit" (His mod recorded who did) but I was ok. He then said he wasn't sure because I had "Noob DPS"...WTF? I came 4th with 3.2k which is pretty good in my opinion, especially for hunters as this isn't a hunter friendly fight (How big is Sarth's hit box?? Really?!?!) anyway, after some umming and aaaahhing I got it, sweet! My first drop in some time :D

The drama didn't end there though - Heloko called the RL a pr*ck, which was more than fair enough and the RL even agreed that it was true. Heloko then rolled for the Wyrmrest band and lost the roll but the RL gave it to him anyway!

I'm not sure what the lesson here is, maybe it's to call the RL a Pr*ck when you're in a PuG to get more loots! XD


Obsidian Sanctum (10 Man)

I had arranged an AMOV run at OS10 at 9:30pm and 6 of us were ready so we had to call in 4 randoms to fill the gaps. Present were:

Asaron (DK Tank)
Succi (OT Feral Druid)
Heloko (Healer Paladin)
Valilor (DPS Hunter)
Ultradeath (DPS DK)
Gloam (DPS Paladin)

We filled in another 2 healers (Oddybody & Chemic) and one other DPS (Can't remember who) and off we went.

Again clearing left to right, we stayed out of the 1st portal and entered into the third, with Asaron and Heloko staying outside in all 3. Being Asaron's first time to OS, he never got to go inside a portal so he missed out on seeing all the naked women mud-wrestling....unlucky Asaron, maybe next time ;)

- Next time Asaron

There was a good DPS race going on, Gloam, Ultradeath and I were keeping up all the way around, I pulled ahead after every drake fight but on the trash Gloam and Ultradeath closed the gap...pretty tense stuff! I was probably only 5k ahead in total damage before Sarth but I managed to steal top DPS spot in the end....better luck next time Gloam/Ultradeath, MWA HA HA!

So the first AMOV OS10 run was a complete success! We'll start farming this short raid weekly now and as it was such a breeze, we'll try Sarth +1 Drake next time!

Some random bits

- Pirates vs Ninjas

- AMOV about to get stoned

- Fun with a Paladin almost goes wrong


- Strange bug if I press jump at the same time as mounting up

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

AMOV Special: Naxxramas: The Plague Quarter

After clearing all 3 boss' in the Anarchid quarter, AMOV rolled on to the next quarter - the plague quarter. Unlike the Anarchid quarter, the plague quarter actually has a drop I need - the T7 shoulders (see previous post) , which drop from Loatheb. Did I get it? Find out below! Here's the Day 1 WWS Report

Noth the Plaguebringer

After clearing out the trash without much hassle we found ourselves at the first boss of the plague quarter, Noth the plague bringer. Noth has this title as he can inflict a plague on some players, which if not decursed will spread and wipe the raid. Along with this ability, Noth can summon skeleton adds and at 3 points in the encounter he will teleport to a balcony and let the raid fight lots of mobs, which need to be picked up by the tanks and OTs.

Pretty straight-forward fight, we finished him in 6 mins 40 secs and as the nature of the fight has noth teleporting in/out and summoning adds, it's not a great one for Marksman Hunters and their mana, I went out of mana a few times and had to switch to the Aspect of the Viper. The report for the boss is here: WWS Noth the Plaguebringer

If you look at the below, in this fight I had to use Aspect of the Viper for 20% of time. Using that ability reduces your damage by 50% so I effectively had to nerf my DPS by 10% in this fight...and that's with both judgement of wisdom and replenishment - I need to figure out what happens in 25 man raids that can stop me from running out of mana....and copy it!

Aspect of the beast? lol

Tishoo, tishoo, all fall down....


Heigan the unclean is infamous for wiping raids that don't know the "dance". AMOV aren't one to turn a good old dance down though and we are most certainly not affaid to bust a move...so off we went to face DJ Heigan in an epic battle for the dancefloor!

Heigan's has 2 phases and different abilities in Naxx10. In Phase 1 (The Slow Dance) the ranged DPS/healers have to run up to the platform and shoot pew pew heigan while the tank and melee DPS follow him round and perform the dance. The waves hit every 10 seconds and Hiegan can also silence all casters within 20 yards so the tank has to keep him a safe distance from the platform. After 90 seconds of slow dancing, Heigan presumably gets bored and begins Phase 2, the fast dance. In this phase Heigan goes back to the platform and EVERYONE has to get to the dancefloor, just as if Fatboy Slim just got on the decks. Valilor hates DJs. Phase 2 everyone has to do the dance, ranged can keep shooting if they can but the important thing here is survival - each wave happens every 2-3 seconds instead of 10 so you're constantly moving around. After 45 seconds of this Phase 1 starts again.

This item won't help you on Heigan unfortunately.

So how did AMOV fair? Well not everyone had been here before so I was expecting the worst. In phase one 2 melee DPS died and in phase 2 nearly the whole raid was finished...a few survived but by the time phase 2 came around again I found myself the last man standing, just like at the end of a night when everyone's coupled up....So only one thing for it, Solo Heigan!

/R "I'm going to have him, CHARRRRGGEEE!"

/R "Lol, go on, solo him"

*I get hit pretty hard*

/R "Ouch!"

*I run towards the exit*

*next hit comes*

*I die*

/R "LOL, you suck!"

*I press jump*

/R "Huzzah, I survived!" Feign Death is great :D

Ok, I didn't actually say Huzzah but some word to that effect. Here's the proof of my survival!:

For attempt two, I got everyone to watch me as I did the "dance" before we pulled Heigan (bad thought: Imagine pulling heigan in a club, eewww) and I had a big star on my head for people to follow....it wasn't enough though, we wiped again after 7 mins 21. The problem this time was that we didn't all die in the dance, there was just not enough DPS left by the end that we couldn't kill him quick enough so we started to get mana issues and also running the risk of hitting the waves each time.

Sign of a good party? Everyone on the floor....

Attempt 3 = Success!

After an epic 9 mins 57 and down to 4 men standing (Valilor, Ultradeath, Asaron and Heloko), we defeated Heigan and won the dancefloor! WWS Heigan the unclean

So after a hectic party, we clearly had enough dancing...time for some magic mushrooms..

Drugs are bad, M'kay?

So on we went to the final boss of the plague quarter, Loatheb. Loatheb is an interesting fight as there's 2 key things to look out for: Spores and the Necrotic Aura.

The DPS need to run to a spore (they can't be aggro'd) and kill them when theres at least 5 people within a 10 year range of it. The 5 people will get a +50% Crit buff plus will not cause any threat from their moves, which last 2 mins, so it's important to get this on the top DPS. A spore is summoned every 30 seconds so it's possible to get all DPS buffed up.

The Necrotic Aura makes the fight interesting for healers as it creates 20 second cycles, 17 seconds where they can't heal and 3 seconds where they can, so it's a mad scramble in those 3 seconds to keep everyone topped up.

Loatheb also casts inevitable doom which causes nature damage and after 7 mins he enrages and casts this ability more frequently, so it's a DPS race to kill him as quick as possible before the damage becomes unhealable which is why you'll need all the crit you can get...his HP is 6.69 million!

Here's a breakdown of the fight:

1min-5min: Uneventful

5:54

Cumulonimbus dies

6:11

Rosencrantz dies

7:26

Gloam: "Don't heal me, i'll use Lay on hands"
*Gloam presses wrong button*

Gloam has died

8:21

Mynnx has died
Loatheb has died

Loatheb looks a bit like a reto druid, maybe he had a spiritual bond with Mynnx the resto druid?

Report is here: WWS Loatheb

Over 4k DPS? Lots of Crit Buff!

Did the T7 Hunter shoulders drop? NO! So 2 quarters down, nothing rolled on....on to the construct Quarter!

Our next task....

TO BE CONTINUED....