Thursday, January 24, 2008

Best... group... ever...





I'm working on my dailies yesterday in Skettis, I'd been camping a spawn point for the escort guy for about 10 minutes or so. My wife has the kids taken care of at this point and she's graciously giving me some time to play WoW. So I think to myself, "well, I don't think I'm gonna be able to escort this guy today, there's just too many folks camping him out and the last party I was in had horde show up at the spawn point before I could get there so screw it! I'll put myself in the LFG tool for Shadow Labyrinth and head back to town". In addition to a cloak dropped by one of the bosses in there, I needed my first key fragment for Karazhan from Shadow Labyrinth. So I cross my fingers and hope.

I get a tell from Scarletpally, "What's your spec?"

Now I know this guy. He is an extremely talented healer who runs around in a full set of healing cloth. I ran Durnholde with him as healer and he kept everyone's life bar pretty much topped off at all times. He could very well be the most skilled and best-geared healer I've met on Draenor thus far.

So, I answer him in a friendly tone with my typical reply to such a request, I didn't think he remembered me, "Well, Ret but I carry around gear for that other stuff too".

"That's good, we need a Ret Paladin". So he invites me and I join. Though I am scratching my head a bit because I'd never heard of a party needing a Ret Paladin specifically.

So I accept the invite and I see the little portraits of my party mates appear, and, habitually, I mouse over each one to see what classes we're working with.

Paladin...

Paladin...

Paladin...

Paladin...

Myself (also Paladin).

So I ask in party, "Uh... Scarlet? Did you know you invited nothing but Paladins?"

"Ya lol!"


"Well," I reply, "even if we wipe a million times over, this will still be hilarity at its utmost! So what's everyone's spec?"

The group composition was thus:
Augustus - A Human Protection Paladin (who would be full-time tank)
Scarletpally - A Human Holy Paladin (who would be full-time healer)
Sgtcrush - A Human Retribution Paladin (later replaced by Notabuffbot) (who would be full-time DPS)
Laqueeta - A Draenei Holy Paladin (who would also be full-time healer)
Notabuffbot - A Human Protection Paladin (was not present at first, replaced Sgtcrush on the last room before Murmur) (who would be full-time DPS)
Arcten - A Human Retribution Paladin, myself (who would also be full-time DPS)

So we head in, apprehensive as hell, but the general vibe in party chat is really positive. We buff up, and here is where I lol'd for the first time.

"Okay, buff up!" exclaims Scarlet. "I got Light and Concentration Aura!"

"I'll do kings and devo", says Augustus

Not many buffs left and I spent hard-earned talent points on these and I'm not about to let them go to waste! So I speak up, "I've got Imp Sanct and Might, I'll do those!"

"Shadow and Wisdom" Laqueeta casually responds.

"Well, sh!t" Sgtcrush bellows. "Ret and uhhh.." .

To be honest, I don't remember what he ended up buffing us with. I think it might have been Salvation (and Augustus would've right-clicked it off himself). I was too busy laughing my head off after I cast a single greater blessing and all of us were hit by it. Then three consecutive *boom* noises of three other greater blessings going off. But I notice Scarlet is repeatedly casting his BoWisdom on us, and my buff counter shows only 10 minutes.

"Lol, use greater Scarlet!"

"Can't! Don't have any Symbols!"

Now I always carry about three stacks of Symbols on me, just in case. But after casting a single greater blessing and having the whole party now showing the only buff I can cast now, I figured I wouldn't be needing many symbols. Carrying 300-ish probably overkill, except for situations like this, but since I didn't see reagents being much of a problem, I say to Scarletpally, "You knucklehead, c'mere!" and I hand him a stack of 100 symbols.

Wow! Efficient buffing! No repeated buffs or wasted reagents!

So I stop laughing and had to take a moment to focus. Next was coming the first pull of the run.

First pull opens up with a pack of humanoid being hit by Augustus flinging his glowing shield. Not a single target mark, just a pack of mobs, I watch closely and see which one Augustus tears into first, he's doing his thing with Seal of Vengeance. I target Augustus and immediately switch over to the little portrait of his target. The consecrate goes down and I'm wailing on the tanks target. I look over a bit and see that Sgtcrush has begun tearing into the same one.

Wow! Focused fighting! Without marks!

I look up from time to time at Augustus' heath bar, making sure I don't need to toss out an
"osh!t" heal, because he's getting wailed on by a lot of mobs... and keeping them focused on him. Every single time my eye wanders up to Augustus' life bar, he gets hit with another heal, and it jumps back up to full.

"Okay", I think "Augustus is getting healed, how about the rest of us?". I look over at Sgtcrush, and he keeps blinking with the light of a cast heal as well, hell, I'm blinking too, upwards of 1700 hit points at a time!

Wow! Flawless healing, and enough mana on the healers that absolutely none of it was wasted.

Now three of us were in melee, but I saw only two Judgments being put on the target at a time. Crusader, which I was doing, and Vengeance from Augustus. I watched his seal animation for a moment whilst fighting and notice that Sgtcrush too was Sealing and then Judging Crusader.

"Hey Crush" I whisper to him, "you mind throwing Wisdom on these guys instead, our Crusader Judgments don't stack".

"Sure man, no prob," he whispers in reply, "Kinda habit, y'know?"

"I certainly do."

Wow! A cooperative teammate willing to switch up their habitual play style a bit for the benefit of the entire party!

But wait! A FOURTH Judgment appeared on the target! Seal of Light!!! But from who?

*cue suspenseful music crescendo*

Toward the corner of my screen, I saw Laqueeta, one of our beloved healers, in her grim-looking Mask of Penance approach our foe and swing her glowing battle mace just long enough to cast this Judgment upon our target and back away. Crusader Strikes from Sgtcrush and me did their job and kept it refreshed. Offensively, our healer went above and beyond what is usually expected.

Wow! Heals that are so efficient that a healer has time mid-fight to go above and beyond and help out even more!

The rest of the pulls from each of the rooms we made it through went along just as smooth. No more Judgments were cast in error. We worked expertly off each other's synergy. No one did anything stupid. The DPS was far more than adequate.

Though briefly, on the topic of DPS, seeing 5 Hammers of Wrath all being cast simultaneously and watching a foe erupt in a fiery death of explosive holy wrath is the most awesome-looking thing, ever!

We had one wipe on trash, and that was only because we didn't think to pull a pack of mobs quite far enough back in the room of Blackheart.

A Divine Intervention was cast, but it was cast in haste and the recipient of said DI was in a very undesirable position in relation to the mobs. So all died and had to run back.

Five resurrection spells and not a single rez received! Oh the irony! But either way, we ran back, rested up, rebuffed and cleared the remaining mobs in that room flawlessly. We rebound quickly from the wipe but my heart sunk into the pit of my stomach, because up next... was Blackheart the Inciter.

For those unfamiliar with Blackheart the Inciter:
A. He drops one of the best Pre-Karazhan cloaks in the game, one that I have also added to my Karazhan-entry gear wish list, the
Cloak of the Inciter.
B. He mind controls the whole party and makes you go buck-wild and fight your party mates like five starved and rabid dogs all locked in a cage together.

I am more concerned with prospect "B" at this point.

"So uhh... you guys wanna do this?"

"Pop our cool downs at start of fight and dig in."

"Okay, um, which cool downs?"

"Avenging Wrath"

"No, Divine Protection"

"No, Avenging Wrath it will be better"

"But he can't kill us if we use Protection, let's use that."

"Okay, okay, fine, the offensive guys will pop Avenging Wrath, the defense won't pop anything. Let's HOPE that he makes our squishy friend in Priest Cloth use his bubble when he MC's us!"

So, we ignited our fiery wings and laid into the boss. His health was going down very, VERY slowly (remember, that two of our members were healing full-time, so we really only had 2 DPSers as opposed to the usual 3). The fight kept going on and on and on and finally, he let us know...

"IT'S TIME FOR FUN!"

When an Ogre says, "it's time for fun", it usually isn't.

This was no different. It was not fun... well... okay... maybe it WAS a little fun seeing my avatar run around, casting seals and auras and blessings of questionable synergy and value and running up to my party mates and thwacking on them a couple times. The Consecrates were EVERYWHERE! You couldn't run around without seeing little yellow damage-over-time numbers clock up all around you. I'm not sure what Blackheart did to everyone else, but when he took control of Arcten, he seemed to favor using a Concentration Aura, Judgment of Light, and Seal of Vengeance combination against my party mates

The "fun" finally ended with the MC ending, a moment of pause, and then a big animation of Thunderclap and everyone flying away from each other and landing with about 2k more of damage inflicted than we had previously just inflicted upon each other.

Bandage up and run back in. Hope the tank would get agro back and we'd all end up in healing range again.

"IT'S TIME FOR FUN!"

Again, it wasn't, this time, Blackheart activated my furious wings and had me lay in on Augustus, our tank. The funniest thing though, was that Blackheart also had the tank spamming Consecrates and I ended up taking a lot more damage from the tank than the tank took from me. When the "fun" ended, we went back to wailing on him. Mana was looking really, REALLY slim towards the end of that fight, I think I went through about three potions over the course, but we downed him. He dropped some caster trinket instead of my cloak that he was supposed to and we pressed on.

More clearing, more flawless execution.

We got to Grandmaster Vorpil.

"Anyone done this fight before, cuz I haven't?" asks Augustus. Again, my heart sinks, as this fight is all about clever tanking. "Just kidding, lol", he chimes after a moment of shocked silence.

Bastard...

Wow! A tank that is spec'd and geared properly and knows exactly what he's supposed to do in a given situation!

Relieved, we begin and the fight goes very, VERY well. Not a single hit from a voidwalker. Vorpil dies, he dropped something else for casters, don't remember what, and we press on toward Murmur.

We start clearing Murmur's room and alas, we wipe (we didn't go after the casters first), however... a Divine Intervention (executed perfectly, this time) comes through and we are saved a run back to our corpses. We adjust our tactics accordingly and handle the casters first, this works well and we easily make our way through the room. About half-done however, Sgtcrush, the other Retribution guy has to go, due to girlfriend agro.

So we are down to four and Murmur is just a couple pulls away. And things had been going so well up until now! At this point, we're all completely sure that nothing but another Paladin will do. This is how we started the run, and damn it this is how we end it!

Oddly enough there is not a single Retribution Paladin to be found in LFG, so we discuss the prospect of our options.

"Can we make do with another Holy?"

"Not if they're spec'd to heal, we're gonna need more damage on this fight, they better have a wicked Holy Shock"

"Lemmie ask..."

"But there's no other Paladins"

"Wait... there's a new Paladin who just joined LFG, lemmie ask him his spec"

"He's Prot, do we want him?"

"Yeah, Prot can kinda DPS with 1hand"

"It's better than nothing, let's grab him"

*Notabuffbot has joined your party!*

"Let's go summon!"

Scarletpally and I begin running out, he drinks a tall glass of Haterade and starts whining about me running so much faster than him. I pass him up on the run and give him a /farewell wave with a /comfort reach around.

Outside the instance, Notabuffbot is happily waiting for us (jerk didn't even bother to tell us he'd already flown here, heh, heh). We gather him up and make our way back inside and rendezvous at the last room to Murmur, where only a few packs of mobs remain.

We buff up, get our auras and judgments straight again and we go to work.

"What happens when you have two Paladins Seal and Judging Vengeance?" I ask. My answer came soon enough.

Real ultimate face-melting power that's what!

I'm watching the life bars on these mobs go down like the Red Baron and for those who haven't seen it before, Seal of Vengeance has this stacking effect. The more stacks of seal of Vengeance on a mob, the more damage a Judgment will do, but the stacks don't go away, they stay there. I'm doing my SoComm/CStrike thing and I'm pretty pleased with myself, and then I see the Vengeance number tick on the debuff icon jump from 1 to 5 in a matter of seconds. Then I see two Judgments go off almost in synch with each other, and these life bars just drop! I am in awe of a pair of Prot Paladins just feeding off of each other's synergy. My initial doubts about a Prot Paladin filling a DPS role in this group were shattered. Somehow I knew that we were going to be fine against Murmur.

We clear the room and briefly discuss the Murmur fight.

I want to go on record saying that "running out of the circular alcove and up on its edge" is NOT enough to get away from his Sonic Boom. You have to just keep running and don't stop until you hit a wall if you can get away that fast. Then you can go back in, refresh your Judgment and go back to work!

I had an empty life bar a few times during that fight, usually after a Sonic Boom, only to be brought right back up to full HP by a deuce of Holy Light casts. Again, the damage was SLOW going. We certainly could've killed the guy faster with a Mage and a Hunter, BUT, we had mana and the survivability to Outlast Murmur. Yeah, it took two healers, and maybe having a Prot Paladin on DPS should be a last-ditch effort (which it was for us). But we did it, baby! We dropped that sucker like a five-dollar ho and cleared the who damn instance! Paladins all! He dropped MORE caster stuff (great for Scarletpally, who wears cloth anyway, lol), but I did get my First Key Fragment. I'll be back, however, because I still need that damn cloak from Blackheart the Inciter.

This was surely a fluke, and I'll probably never experience this kind of amazing party ever again (but I friended all of them, so maybe), but I would have to say this:

Best... group... *hold for dramatic pause*... EVER!

A prominent party of proficient Paladins perfectly pwns a PUG'd instance! Remember that!

4 comments:

Assbringer said...

NOTE TO SELF: Fix picture when I get home today, image too small.

Anonymous said...

Haha. It really was a blast, I hate the fact that my connection got a bit funky at the end. We should party again in the future!

Awesome post. Made me smile.

Assbringer said...

Hurray for the friend list! I'll look forward to grouping with you again soon.

MarcusMaximi said...

Woah!!!

Epic, I was honestly only thinking this morning how cool it would be to 5-pally some heroics.

Now I really really want to do it :)

Excellent story :)