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