Epic Dungeon Progression Aug 2013 - Dec 2013

[Phelaia]

Date: 10/29/2013
Dungeon: Epic Grey Wolf Den
Team: Phelaia (DPS TR), Hrothnor (DPS GWF), Elissa (DPS CW), Thorgrim (CC CW), Aglavalyn (Healer)

Strange that we have no tank, but this strangely worked.

The first two bosses weren't so bad. No one fell.

Ethraniev Marrowslake: In the first three tries, we didn't get past first wave of adds. At the fourth try, we did it. Miri and Agla on upper platform. Thorgrim kited the boss around and debuffed the boss with Ray of Enfeeblement. Hrothnor unleashed on boss and dealt with the adds. Phelaia was stealthed 90% of the time, hucked daggers from a distance, dropped a decoy to distract the boss every 23 seconds, and stabbed the boss only when she was about to stab her sword into the ground. Elissa kept DPS on the adds. Agla somehow kept us all healed through Astral Shield. It took a while, but we got her!

[Tundrra]

Grey wolf is finally completed....o m g omg OMG! I was starting to think we would have to wait till a rebalance. Great work all!!!

[Tyrandil]

Ethraniev Marrowslake needs her name in the ceremonial green text :-)

[Phelaia]

Dungeon: Epic Mad Dragon
Team: Hrothnor (Tank/GWF), Elissa (Healer), Tyrandil (as Talana) (DPS/GF), Phelaia (DPS/CC), Thorgrim (CC)
Date: 11/7/2013
Status: MAD SUCCESS!!

A similar team tried it last week, and we didn't get far in the fight with the dragon. Thorgrim, however, was convinced that 2 wizards--one Oppresor AND one Thaumatheurge would work. So we went in with the above team combo. The first two fights went swimmingly. Boss #2 took especially little time to go down.

The last fight took 4 tries...again. The first three times went the same way: the team fell one by one in descending order of squishiness. Why? The two people with the most HP were on boss, while the squishier three were downing the adds. That proved to be not enough. Phelaia was also a little rusty with her wizardry. Thee fourth attempt had Hrothnor alone on boss, and he was very good about pointing the dragon away from the rest of the group. The rest of us stayed up near the chest, and between 1 tank, 2 wizards, and 1 healer, the adds were actually dying instead of just controlled. At last, Phelaia remembered how to play a wizard with another wizard in the room. :-p Unlike last time, we actually killed all of the Erinyes, the Hellfire Magi, the Devils, and the Imps before the dragon went down. For once, we actually killed all the adds during the wave!

One thing worth noting is that everyone in the party had a gear score of above 10k. Tyrandil's Conquerer GF and Hrothnor's Sentinel GWF both had gear scores of above 14k, and they both hit like a ton of bricks. The real minimum gear score of this dungeon should be 10k or 11k. Also, Phelaia's Thaumatheurge proved to be a nice complement to Thorgrim's Oppresor.

[Tundrra]

Great work Phelaia !

With the new artifacts coming I think it will be easier to get players to a 10k GS. When the module 2 hits I will create us a new progression thread, due to the 3 new pieces of gear and additional ability on the hot bar.

[Phelaia]

Dungeon: Epic Castle Never (the normal version got lost in the Spellplague :-p)
Date: 11/11/2013
Team: tundrra (healer), Nimm (DPS GWF), Tyrandil (CC GWF), Phelaia (CC), Tornasunder (Tank)

This was entirely tundrra's idea. Phelaia was a little scared. Besides, our new tank just got done with Cragmire the other night, and now we've dragged him into Castle Never. However, in we went...

The place was crawling with zombies right off the bat. Tyrandil was like "Bring it!" A couple of rooms into it, a cutscene was triggered: a very long pan down a very long hallway with 100+ zombies. One of us got a little aggressive, and all the zombies collectively charged us, and we wiped. No matter, we try again. After that, Phelaia became the one to pull 12-15 adds at a time by hucking one or two little well-aimed snowballs. The corridors are long and narrow, which made fighting difficult. There were puzzles everywhere reminiscent of old school RPGs. Frozen zombies also become unfrozen if you so much touch a skill node sitting on a shelf. The Battle Wight Commanders were very tough, and when there were four of them in a very small room, things got a little tough. There were no campfires between the entrance of the castle to the winding stairs right before the first boss, but once you get to the stairs, there were two campfires, one at the bottom of the stairs and one at the top (why...).

First boss is a ginormous spider, basically an even bigger Daughter of Lolth with different colors. The adds are Spitting Spiders, Deathjump Spiders, Blade Spiders, all you've seen in Rothe Valley. This time, there are just a ton of them. As in Frozen Heart, the adds in this place is on a timer, about two Blade Spiders every 5 seconds. Our first attempt was to lure the boss into the hallway before the room and fight her there, but oh no, the devs got smart, and she'd reset once we retreated into the hallway. Second attempt, we lure her to the front of the room. Phelaia was quickly eaten by 5-6 Blade Spiders, and then we all fell one by one. Third attempt, we fought her in the open. Phelaia centered Singularity on the boss and dumped off the adds for Tyrandil to take care of while he was chopping away at the boss anyway. Nimm focused on boss. This worked ok. We were still dying, but at least we weren't all dying all at once. There was no door to the room, so we just one by one all ran back in to help. At 5%, Nimm was the last one standing, and he started running in circles kiting the boss and hoping that we'd come back in to help. Amazingly, we all got back in one by one, killed the boss, but the adds were still spawning! This dungeon is bugged...what's new. By 9:30 PST, we got a few rooms past the first boss, but we were ready to call it for the night.

The Castle will always be there, and we will go back.

[Phelaia]

Dungeon: Epic Cloak Tower and Cragmire Crypts
Date: 11/10/2013
Team: Tornasunder (Tank), Nayla (CC), Phelaia (DPS), Elissa (Healher), Tyrandil (Off-tank)

Tornasunder and Nayla were new, so we did this during a delve event to help them get purple gear. Nayla got the Archmage gloves out of it, and Tornasunder got a nice purple shield. The rest of us got purple belts that were at least worth a nice pile of diamonds.

[Phelaia]

Dungeon: Epic Castle Never
Date: 11/18/2013
Team: tundrra (healer), Nimm (DPS GWF), Tyrandil (Tank), Tornasunder (Tank), Phelaia (CC)

Two tanks...ok, this will get interesting. :-)

We zoned in at 9 EST. Everything went about as swimmingly as possible. Both tanks pulled aggro from adds, and almost nothing escaped to hit the casters. Phelaia continued to play bowling with Shards of Avalanche. By the time we got to the first boss, it was only 10 EST. This took a lot longer last time. We're making progress.

First boss was a bit messy. All fighters went after the boss. The casters got chased by the Blade Spiders. Phelaia pulled out an old trick from Spellplague and jumped non-stop to kite the adds in a circle, but nearly ran into more spiders waiting in the wings. Tundrra somehow kept everyone up for a while. After 3 wipes, we did it. Any landing you can stick is a good one, right?

At this point, it was only 10:30 EST, so we charge on. Along the way, we got a taste of the infamous Red Wizards. Two words: they hurt. By 11 EST, we got to the second boss. Oh look, a Beholder! Unfortunately, the Beholder could not be pulled out of the room anymore. The adds are also on a faster timer then they were in the first boss room. After a few wipes, Tyrandil suggested that we try to do this like Mad Dragon: biggest DPS on boss, CW pulls adds away from boss, then 4 of us on adds. That worked until the first wave of adds. One wizard is not enough crowd control, and we all fell rather quickly to the adds.

Our next trip to Castle Never will take some planning and thinking.

[Tundrra]

We would have had that beholder if i had not goofed:( everything was going smooth and we had him down to 50%, but instead of doing my aoe dmg, i had my tab button in which did a huge aoe knockback!!! Which caused the adds to aggro Nimm on the boss instead of staying with the tanks all clustered for death:(. /sorry folks!

[tornasunder]

I am also to blame in some part for our issues. Let me start by saying that this is very different from MMO's I've played in the past (save for GW2) where you have to "swap powers" off of your hotbar. I had a duh moment while on the boss as I wasn't using my single target abilities (griffon's wrath, knight's Challenge, lunging strike, and the daily "pummel" power (forget the name). So, on our last attempt, I'd switched my skills to match that line up of spells... and was on add duty lol. I'll get there, I promise, it's just a pretty steep learning curve heading into T2 stuff right out of the gate.