<Doja Dojo> takes on Karazhan!!

As many of you know, I’ve suffered much distress about my guild situation as of late. I essentially dissolved the last guild I was in (Unite & Conquer), left two others, and eventually made my own in a fearless attempt at pioneering the uncharted waters of guild leadership. I don’t consider myself to be a natural-born leader (or even a good leader, at that), but I know how to bring people together and to open up avenues of communication.

That, if nothing else, has held my guild together in its fledgling stages of development. It’s is now time for the bird to leave the nest and take flight…

So, I gathered up the best and brightest of my guild, Doja Dojo, and scheduled this week to be our first “guild attempt” at Karazhan. I’ll be honest – I was expecting the worst. I knew I could take the beating, but our guild is very short on healers. (Most of them are alts with mains in different guilds, unfortunately.) So, we had to pull in a few pug Healers, and we gave ‘er a go.

On a side note, this was my lil bro’s first foray into Karazhan ever, so we were both very excited to finally get him in on some raid action.

Grats, Wrathkaavin.

LOWER KARAZHAN (Night 1)
1 Protection Warrior Radhja
1 Arms Warrior Kantrin
1 Balance Druid Korriz
1 Restoration Druid Serinau
2 Shadow Priests Saeka, Keera
1 Arcane Mage Truelove
1 Affliction Warlock Wrathkaavin
1 Beast Mastery Hunter Astarr
1 Holy Paladin Bersk

Surprisingly, we have very little trouble with the bosses. I think the trash gave us more trouble, but once the DPS and CCers got organized, things ran very smoothly. We one-shotted Attumen, Moroes, and Maiden with absolutely no issues. I don’t think a single toon died during the first hour of our raid. This just means I can hold aggro with TC/Demo Shout over lame DPS and moderate heals. Nothing truly remarkable.

We get to Opera, and we have our first real challenge – Oz. (I was REALLY hoping for BBW, but w/e). With our group makeup, we at first decided to fear-spam Roar, incinerate-spam Strawman, tank Tinman, OT tito, and zerg Dorothee. Little did I realize that DoTs break Strawman’s disorientation, so he basically raped us on the first two pulls simply because of that. So, we decided to let the mage scorch-spam him instead. We did it perfectly after we fixed that one little error, collected our badges, and moved on.

I knew we couldn’t do Nightbane yet. Just not pheasible with such slow DPS, so we skipped him and went on to Curator.

First attempt went well, but DPS got a little confused on the flares and lost focus fire, leading to a wipe after the 2nd Evocation. Then, our Mage decided she had to leave, so we sub’d in a rogue friend of mine who is almost as well-gear’d as myself.

On the second attempt, we decided to let the Arms warrior melee the flares instead and let the warlock (my brother) offtank Curator’s Hateful Bolts. I was very hesitant to try it, but Wrath was up to it, and did it perfectly. I was so proud. We downed Curator easily with the added flare DPS, collected some loot, and called it a night.


UPPER KARAZHAN (Night 2)

A slightly different group setup, but fewer puggies this time around.

1 Protection Warrior Radhja
1 Shadow Priest Saeka
1 Holy Priest Kalindra
1 Balance Druid Korriz
1 Affliction Warlock Wrathkaavin
1 Enhancement Shaman Naolie
1 Restoration Druid Serinau
1 Arcane/Fire Mage Truelove
2 Rogues Fadedkizmeas, Temptation


I didn’t have high hopes for the group, since the resto druid was undergear’d, and I’d never met the other two healers. I was just hoping to get thru Shade with as few problems as possible.

But first, a humorous anecdote!

We were looking for a 10th, and I was spamming /2 and /4 with LF1M macros (I hate doing it, but it’s the fastest way to beat respawn timers when my friend’s list is short of what I need). So, we find a replacement and we summon him in. Then, someone says “Make a port, I’m not honored yet and I need to repair”. Mage makes a port to Shat, and everyone goes to click it… then my bro Wrath clicks a split-second too late and gets ported.

Teh funnay, imo. He didn’t think it was amusing, but we railed him about portal jokes for the rest of the night. Even the theory that Wrath could be ported via Soulwell portal was mentioned at one point. :P

Anyway…

It took us a few tries, but we managed to swing it. Shade’s health and mana were the same almost the whole fight, so we were hoping to skate by without a poly/pro, but he got us at the last second with Elementals up and nuked everyone so fast we didn’t have time to shout “save your pots/healthstones for AFTER pyro”. It was kinda funny, actually. We regrouped and downed him after that without much effort. The bash/kick rotations were perfect, elementals feared/banished/killed, and Shade drops some nice caster pants. Unfortunately, Wrath’s luck on the rolls sucked tonight.

But we were saved to Shade. Mission accomplished!

“Let’s do Illhoof!” “Let’s do Netherspite!”

People were so excited at this point, we decided to take a break before engaging the mobs on the way to Chess/Prince and went to Illhoof. Wrath was just learning the joys of SoC spam, and the mage was ready to do some mean AoE.

We tried three times, and without an OT, this fight can suck. Kil’rek ran rampant, so melee couldn’t hold steady DPS on him, which also lead to chains not being burned fast enough. Eventually, we realized that we just didn’t have the burst-DPS for this fight at this point, and gave up after the 3rd attempt.

So, we moved on to the welfare-epics… CHESS!

Do I need to say this was a one-shot? :P

We were going to take a short break after Chess, or at least that’s what I said over vent, but the new kids wandered up on the steps to check out the scenery… and found a Greater Fleshbeast awaiting them.

“RUUUNNN!!!!”

“NO!” I said, “I got it”, and intervened the beast’s target-of-target just before the blow, giving me enough rage to crit a shield slam, grab aggro, and save the other 5 living party members before they got devoured.

“No sight-seeing, guys. We’ve got work to do.”

And with that, we headed to Prince. No problem on the trash, and we soon arrived in Netherspace. The first pull was a complete fluke. I swear, a GM was sitting above Netherspace throwing Infernals at us like darts. It wasn’t even funny. So, we rebuffed, pulled, and wiped again on bad infernal placement. Third time, we had okay infernals, but all the melee died to Enfeeble + ShadowNova… and I SAW that they were out of range, but they kept dying when it went off. (Maybe they stepped into an infernal’s fire, or were just on the outer edge, but it looked like they had plenty of room). Eventually, it was just me and the 3 healers alive, and I solo-tank+DPS’d him from ~80% to 51% before I finally got pinched by infernals, HAD to move, and my camera got smushed by the overhanging wall by the door, leading me to momentarily turn my back to him just enough to slip a trash of death on me. Not cool.

Then, the priest healer recommended a semi-exploit to me I hadn’t known about… an elevated “safe spot” right beside the front door. I’d heard about a safe-spot before, and he explained that it’s not 100%, but the chance for an infernal landing within range was very very low. Despite my inhibitions to change the gameplan to follow a potential explot, I wanted to see if it really worked.

And it did. I just stood in whatever infernals dropped (but keeping it to just ONE infernal…) and tanking Prince thru all 3 phases just past the little notch on the wall worked wonders. Melee still died by shadow novas, but that was just slow timing and unfamiliarity with the fight in general.

I will admit tho… if it weren’t for the fantastic healers we had, this Karazhan run would not have happened, imo.

So, a guild Rogue walks away with T4 gloves, a guild mage gets T4 headpiece, and lots of purples dropping for other guildies. I personally didn’t walk away with any loot, but anything that helps the guild is helping me regardless.


THE REST OF KARAZHAN – Illhoof, Netherspite, and Nightbane

1 Protection Warrior Radhja
1 Prot Paladin Childofpara
1 Arms Warrior Kantrin
1 Restoration Druid Serinau
1 Holy Paladin Draemon
1 Arcane/Fire Mage Truelove
1 Rogues Fadedkizmeas
1 Hunter Buffshamans
1 Balance Druid Korriz
1 Affliction Warlock Wrathkaavin

Yeah, no Priests and only 2 healers. That’s how we decided to roll tonight. I needed the practice for multimob-tanking, honestly.

7pm ST rolls around on Nathrezim, and we’re actually inside Karazhan ready to pull. This has never happened before, and it felt so good to have things go as planned for a change. Maybe we’re really getting somewhere.

We started with Illhoof, since it was closest to Shade’s library. One pull and we’re there.

Between the mage and the lock, AE/SoC spam was more than enough to keep the imps in check. The Prot Paladin I brought along was VASTLY undergeared, but I had faith that he could spam consecrate and hold aggro on at least Kil’rek. Our biggest concern was, of course, burst dmg on the Demon Chains. So, as usual, I tell everyone to make the macro:

/target Demon

And lo and behold, I think everyone did cause we one-shot Illhoof, and his staff drops for the Balance Drood.

Next up, Netherspite.

We gave this one a good few runs. I expected a few wipes, but the fight is so easy once you get the rotations down and know when to run. Well, the people who’d never seen the fight stepped into the wrong beams, or just couldn’t stay out of the nether-puddles-of-inky-black-death that spawn around him. (Wrath learned the hard way that you need as much of your graphics settings as your video card will allow.)

So, 5 attempts and no loot later, we decided to try Nightbane instead. Since the prot paladin had never been here before, I told him his role in the flight phase was crucial simply to keep the skeletons off the casters/healers, and to grab as many as possible. He did quite well, and we focus-fired them all down with 10-12 secs to spare each time.

So, we one-shot Nightbane, and the [item]Shield of Impenetrable Darkness[/item] drops… and the Prot Paladin sells his drop to the holy paladin for 300g because he already had the Coldarra badge shield.

Apparently, respect means nothing to paladins, so long as enough gold is involved. (Just kidding, but damn… )

Anyway, that’s our week in Kara. We’re 11/12 now, with only Netherspite to clear. Good job, Doja Dojo. We have our first Prince down.

~Radhja~