Leviathan

A Warlock, an Illusionist, and a Mystic walk into a Raid…

Last night was an incredible night on so many levels. It may be an expansion behind, but I finally obtained my mythical weapon on both the illusionist and the mystic. A huge thank you to Paradise Lost on the Oasis server who run pick up Veeshan’s Peak raids once a month and invite members of the server (as well as friends and family from their guild) to join without having to pay an arm and a leg as other guilds charge.

Of course mythicals would not be quite as fun was there not a little drama that went along with the fight. I needed Leviathan on both the illusionist and the mystic, and since they are on seperate accounts it was decided that I would box this encounter. Since the mystic heals and the illusionist does nothing but stand there and power feed, it wasn’t a big deal – until I heard over guild vent something along the lines of ‘wow this illusionist is stupid’ (except they didn’t use the word stupid and used something harsher which I won’t repeat on my site). I spoke up on the mystic and said ‘oh really’? and informed them that the illusionist was actually being boxed, while I concentrated on the healer. They didn’t realize this and fumbled through some sort of ‘I have to give all new guild mates a hard time’ even though I’m not new and have been there for a while. Their complaint was that I had not put time compression on them. They didn’t ask if they could have it, and I honestly did not even recall casting it since I was concentrating on other things, but instead of just asking or inquiring about it they decided to be exceptionally rude and insulting. It put me in a bad frame of mind for the remainder of the evening, as I explained to them in tells that all they had to do was ask, and that she was being boxed.

Leviathan went down – almost without issue – Calreth was there for his update into Veeshan’s Peak and actually ended up dropping link part way through the fight as his power went out. We quickly sent someone outside of the zone (thus exiting combat) and invited him back to the raid while Leviathan was around 20% health. It was quite intense but he got his update which is all that really mattered. Once Leviathan was down it was on to Veeshan’s Peak. Now, I have not been to this zone since I wrote my article in an older issue of Beckett Massive Online Gamer, and I certainly had never been with any characters I currently play, so it had been some time. Groups were swapped around and I started out on the mystic, since her update was first. I knew it was going to be a long raid because we intended on clearing the entire place – not such a big deal when you have an entire raid of geared up players, but we were still sporting two groups of pick up raiders, and alts from the main guild.

The raids of RoK are so different then the ones in TSO. In TSO they are all about curing fast and often – constantly curing. You go through so many potions self curing. They are all about who has what particular debuff at the time and what the counter to that debuff is. I really don’t enjoy them nearly as much as I enjoy RoK raids, which involve a mixture of tactics and most of them involve jousting and knockbacks.

The first and second floors went off without a hitch, the mystic update is Hoshkar on the second floor, and by the time we defeated the encounter I was starting to fall asleep at the desk – it was four hours into raids (which I haven’t done for quite some time) and I barely looked at the mythical weapon I was granted back in greystone yard before logging over to the illusionist for the third floor.

The third floor is the quickest and also the easiest as chance would have it. We wiped three times for the entire VP zone, twice it was due to a faulty pull of some golems, the third time it was Silverwing and some AoE avoidance not being activated in time. I think. I my mind is basically a blur of encounters by that point.

The end of the evening resulted in a huge number of people getting their updates, and I was really happy. I absolutely love the illusionist mythical which allows me to use my single target haste buff as a group buff and adds some double attack to it (I’m so glad I have the master version of the spell) as well as allowing me to use my pet without any concentration (that’s three whole slots it opens up). It also grants my group a power proc which is never a bad thing. Excited? Yes, I certainly was. Taking a look at the mystic mythical above it’s also pretty dang nice, and I’m glad to have finally gotten it – even if I am an expansion behind.

All in all it was a great night, and I really do owe a big thank you to the folks of Paradise Lost – they’ve made me feel incredibly welcome (most of them) and I appreciate it more then they’ll ever know.

How a Saturday Should Be

Despite the heat wave Ottawa seems to be going through lately (ugh I’m eager for snow) yesterday was a fantastic Saturday. It was one of those days I could just play whatever game I wanted, I had no obligations anywhere, and I had a blast. I love days like that. In fact I love them so much I think Sunday will be following in Saturday’s footsteps.

I started the day out in World of Warcraft. I’ve settled down on the Ravenholdt server where I have four characters, one actually being a main. I play a blood elf priest the majority of the time tagging along with a friend who plays a troll warrior. I love playing my healer classes, and we’ve just hit level 47, almost 49. With the latest patch giving us epic mounts at 40, we’re now running all over the place at light speed. I’ve never gotten a character over level 50 before even though I’ve played off and on since release, so we’re coming up to content that is still quite new to me. I enjoy it. I also have a 38 shaman, 38 hunter, and 21 mage. They’re mostly just craft characters, with the hunter being my ‘farming’ character. Skinning and mining so I can make some coin for the others. We joined a small little guild (I mean, maybe five people in it) and it’s actually been a lot of fun. WoW still won’t ever be my main game of choice, but when I want to just kick back for an hour or two it’s certainly fun and easy.

The remainder of my day was spent patching Aion (ugh it had been a while, there was a lot of work to do) for their last beta testing weekend, and then playing some EverQuest II.

In EQ2 a few things happened. First of all, I decided to switch from playing my illusionist to my troubador. I know, I flip flop more then, well, pretty much anyone I know. I had a line of thinking for this, and it still (so far) makes sense (in my head). The illusionist has far more gear then the bard but if I concentrate on the bard for a bit that’s easily fixed. I was wearing two sets of T1 gear, and with my spare shards decided to switch so I was just wearing the bard set. Now I need more shards (as usual). I really miss being able to trade shards via the craft system.

There was a pick up leviathan raid going on, and I decided since it’s my troubadors next update I should try to get in. After sitting in group for 30 minutes we discovered that no one in the raid actually had access to leviathan – and so I decided to leave and free up room for someone who DID have access.

Many people don’t realize that YES you do need access to enter the Leviathan raid. So what is this access?

You need to kill the Overking, and you also need to kill Venril Sathir. I had already defeated Venril Sathir the previous week, it’s the first encounter I needed for my epic. All I needed was the Overking. Low and behold Paradise Lost decided to head to Chardok and take down that Dizok, so I tagged along to get my Leviathan flag.

There’s no quest involved, and there’s not any way (currently) to tell in game exactly what you have access to and what you do not have access to. This day in age I think that’s very important to a game. How do I know if I can get into Poets Palace – while there may not be a whole lot in EQ2 that requires access, there are still things. Not to mention those blasted druid rings, how on earth do I keep track across so many characters who needs what. It’s frustrating to say the least – I did hear that they’re adding a keyring type command in an upcoming patch / expansion, so we’ll just have to be on the lookout for that.

We had two groups of guild mates and two groups of PUGS who needed the update. The raid was incredibly smooth, no wipes. Exactly the type of raid I enjoy! I was starting to get a little irritated at the heat by that time, with both the fan and the AC going, so I logged off for the evening and decided to spend an hour or two in bed reading before I fell asleep. All in all, it was a perfect Saturday, and I had a great time. Hopefully everyone else had a fantastic weekend thus far as well, looking forward to hearing all about it!

See you in Norrath!

Nomadic Gamer